By Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen November 16, 2010

Federal security agents recorded 171 phone calls between suspected terrorist Mahmoud Jaballah and his lawyers after they agreed to halt the practice in December 2008. That revelation is contained in a recent order issued by Federal Court Judge Kevin Aalto, who condemns the repeated breaches of solicitor-client privilege. “Solicitor-client privilege is virtually sacrosanct in the Canadian judicial system,” Aalto said in ordering two federal agencies to turn over a raft of documents to Jaballah’s defence team. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Canada Border Services Agency must provide Jaballah with documents related to their policies on intercepting solicitor-client communications.

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Toronto — Globe and Mail Update Friday, Jul. 23, 2010

Canada’s national security agency does not have an “effective mechanism” for ensuring it does not rely on evidence obtained by torture, the Federal Court has found. The court sided with a man accused of terrorist links, who Ottawa is trying to deport, in finding there are “reasonable grounds” to believe some of the information against him was obtained through torture and is therefore inadmissible. Mohamed Mahjoub was arrested in 2000 and held on a national security certificate, accused of links to an Egyptian Islamic terrorist organization.

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By Mohammed Adam, The Ottawa Citizen, April 1, 2010

The federal government case against Ottawa terror suspect Mohamed Harkat appears to have suffered a significant blow Wednesday when a document was introduced in court showing that Abu Zubaydah, once considered a senior terrorist and 9/11 mastermind, actually had nothing to do with the attacks. Even more surprising, the document, which quotes U.S court filings declassified last week, shows that Zubaydah, once believed to be one of the top leaders in al-Qaeda, was not even a member of the terrorist group. One of Harkat’s lawyers, Norm Boxall, said the information is significant because part of the government’s case against Harkat is that he is an associate of Zubaydah. If Zubaydah has no ties to al-Qaeda, as now appears to be the case, a large chunk of the case against Harkat is under question.

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Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, 15 December 2009

Another of Ottawa’s national security claims has proved bogus. For more than seven years ((CJFA: actually more than eight)), the federal government and its security bureaucrats insisted that alleged terrorist Hassan Almrei so threatened Canada that he had to be imprisoned without trial. Even when Almrei was released earlier this year, he had to submit to an Orwellian form of house arrest. Now, we find out that he was never a terrorist at all. More to the point, in quashing the security certificate that has kept the 35-year-old refugee in legal limbo for eight years, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that the government’s evidence against him was largely a confection, backed up by dubious newspaper clippings, sloppy history and unreliable evidence from informants who “had motive to concoct stories that cast Almrei in a negative light.”

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Kingston, 30 November 2009 — Mohammad Mahjoub was hospitalized in Kingston last Thursday evening, on the 179th day of a liquids-only hungerstrike. Mr. Mahjoub, a 50-year old father of two, has been detained for over nine years without charge under a security certificate. Until Thursday he was the sole detainee at the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre (KIHC), dubbed “Guantanamo North” to draw attention to the practice of holding prisoners indefinitely at the facility, on secret evidence. Mr. Mahjoub has been on hungerstrike since 1 June 2009.

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