Canadian officials have responded, through the U.S. State Department, to allegations that a former U.S. police officer was jailed and tortured there not with a denial that Scott Loper experienced the treatment he reports, but with a "waiver" of his rights to have consular officials from his own nation notified.

The document also is dated 2003, even though Loper's case developed in 2000, further muddying the situation, his civil rights lawyer noted.

Now the lawyer, Scott Shields, who has been advising Loper in his pursuit of a complaint against Canada under the Vienna Convention international treaty, is reviewing the case before determining the next step.

"In a sense we're happy to have a copy of that waiver, albeit it's dated three years after he was incarcerated," Shields told WND today. "The peculiar thing about that waiver is it's about an admissibility hearing."

He said in Loper's case, the nation of Canada determined his eligibility for deportation at the beginning of his sentence in 2000, and he eventually was deported, so a document dated 2003 and pertaining to such an admissibility hearing would be irrelevant.

"For them to say he waived his rights, that means nothing. Scott is pursuing this as a violation of the Vienna Convention as it relates to his case of arrest," Shields told WND. "An individual cannot waive his rights under the Vienna Convention. It's a treaty between the Canadian government and the U.S. government.

"We know they never notified the U.S. consulate," Shields said. "What is good about it is that it identifies Scott as a U.S. citizen."

The "waiver" came through the U.S. State Department and U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., to Shields on behalf of Loper.

The state department letter, from Kenneth Durkin, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management, notes that this "Notice of Rights Conferred by the Vienna Convention" was given to the U.S. consulate in Toronto "by a Canadian immigration officer and indicates that Mr. Loper answered 'No' to the question asking him whether he would want a U.S. consular officer informed of his incarceration."

Unsigned Canadian document from 2003

Shields, however, pointed out that not only was the document dated 2003, when Loper's incarceration started in 2000, but the document also was not signed by Loper and addressed only a specific hearing, not Loper's incarceration.

Those issues were not addressed by the U.S. State Department or the letter from Hoyer's office.

"With these documents, the congressman has provided you with all the documents this office has received from the State Department that concern Mr. Loper, and the Congressman has now done all that he can do," said the letter from Kerry W. Kircher, deputy general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.

"I was flabbergasted that one of the most powerful men in Congress is turning a blind eye to this," Shields said.

Both the State Department and officials in Hoyer's office have declined to answer WND questions about the issue several times. There was no answer to WND's call to Hoyer's office this evening.

Multiple offices in the Canadian government bureaucracy, including those in the nation's consular division as well as foreign affairs office, also have declined to answer WND questions on the complaint.

Loper has reported he was jailed in Canada from 2000-2004, and alleges the charges were trumped-up and he subsequently was tortured during his confinement.

Besides his pursuit of a complaint against Canada, he's been searchingfor his wife and son who disappeared at the time of his jailing.

Loper told WND he was told by the State Department earlier that his case wouldn't be pursued, even though Canada had admitted the violation, because of the relationship between the two nations, and the U.S. desire for Canada's cooperation on certain issues.

But without a resolution in this case, it would mean U.S. citizens "are not safe anywhere in the world. At least you're not going to get the protection of the U.S. government," Shields said.

The case was brought to the attention of the State Department and Congress by Loper, who has described stumbling upon an alleged police-run drug ring in Canada in 2000. Loper says he was suddenly jailed before he could contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and his wife and son, Carolyn and Edward, disappeared while he was in custody.

Loper said when he was jailed in 2000 he never was allowed to get help from U.S. consular officials in Canada, as the treaty requires.

The State Department earlier confirmed to WND that Canada had admitted the violation of Loper's treaty rights.

"We are aware Mr. Loper was not allowed access to American consular officials while arrested and detained in Canada. In our discussions with Canadian officials they have acknowledged that oversight," a spokesman for the department told WND. He said he should be identified as a "spokesman," and not by his actual name.

Loper, who had moved to Canada so his wife at the time could be closer to her family, later divorced and remarried.

While moving into a townhome with his second wife, Carolyn, they were welcomed by a beer-drinking crowd in the next unit who identified themselves as police officers, one of whom later warned him that a neighbor on the other side was "under surveillance" as a possible drug dealer.

Loper's experience as a New Jersey officer alerted him, and he subsequently watched officers repeatedly sneak into the next-door unit. He bought some microphones and a tape recorder and installed the mikes so they would monitor what was going on, discovering that police officers in the Durham region allegedly were busting drug dealers being identified by his neighbor, then bringing the drugs to him for sale, he said.

Before he could take his evidence to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's federal police unit, he was busted by local police, taken to a mental health facility and detained, he said.

While he was confined, his townhome was ransacked, his tapes confiscated and his wife and young son disappeared. He recalls a last telephone call from Carolyn. "I love you but they'll take Eddie away!" were the last words he heard her say, Loper told WND.

Released from the mental facility after a few days, he found his wife and son gone, and when he tried to find them, found himself the subject of a restraining order. He tried to express his love for his wife and son in a letter to a friend.

But authorities determined that was an attempt at an "indirect communication" and in violation of a court order, so he was sentenced to prison for four years.

In prison, he said, officers repeatedly tried to get him to admit that he was making up the claims about the police officers' drug connections. "There was a hot water radiator. They would spray me with that to get me to recant my story, to get me to stop saying it," he said.

Back in the United States, he's remarried and pursuing another line of work. But he still is demanding justice for what he experienced.

"On numerous occasions as I asked and demanded to see a representative of the American government … I was laughed at by Canadian prison authorities…," he said.

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