Press Conference, 21 February 2008: Mostafa Henaway, Immigrant Workers' Centre (l); Gaétan Chateauneuf, President Conseil centrale de Montréal (CSN); Me. Johanne Doyon; Marie-Ève Lamy; Adil Charkaoui. Absent from photo: Salam Elmenyawi, President, Muslim Council of Montreal; Warren Allmand, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

Listen to audio from the press conference.

New security certificate law will be challenged

Montreal, 22 February 2008 -- The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui yesterday called on ‘Minister of Public Safety’ Stockwell Day to refrain from signing a new security certificate against Adil Charkaoui and the other security certificate detainees under the new security certificate law, which is expected to enter into force any day.

The organizations present at yesterday's press conference also warned that the new security certificate legislation will once again be subject to a public campaign and a constitutional challenge.

“Last year, when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the security certificate to be unconstitutional, we celebrated; I believed I was going to have a chance to clear my name at last,” said Adil Charkaoui, who was arrested under a security certificate in Montreal almost five years ago. “Today I feel disappointed, disenchanted, even bitter,” said the 34-year old teacher and father of three, “The new legislation not only fails to correct the injustices of the old law, it makes it worse by giving the appearance of legitimacy to a fundamentally unjust process.”
 
“Mr. Charkaoui’s case has been marked by leaks of secret information, by the use of evidence obtained under torture, by the destruction of evidence by CSIS, public retractions of information in the file, hidden arrest warrants, and the miraculous recovery of long-lost interviews at strategic moments,” said Marie-Ève Lamy, member of the Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui. “It’s enough! No new certificate should be issued against Mr. Charkaoui.”
 
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last February that the old security certificate legislation was unconstitutional. This decision will enter into effect tomorrow, 23 February 2008, and the former law will cease to be in force. However, in October the government introduced a new law, Bill C-3, which is almost identical to the old law, with the addition of a 'special advocate'. This law passed the Senate last week and it is expected that Mr. Harper’s Cabinet will take the final step to ensure that it enters into force any day now. If Minister Stockwell Day and Diane Finley, Minister of Immigration, sign new certificates on the same day, the current detainees will remain under their current conditions of control orders, house arrest or prison and be forced to undergo a new secret trial process at the Federal Court in the coming months.
 
“The addition of a special advocate to a process in which the Court’s decision can still rely on secret evidence does nothing to ensure justice,” stated Me. Johanne Doyon, who brought Charkaoui’s constitutional challenge to the Supreme Court. “This is a system that has already failed in England. The special advocate is nothing but camouflage,” she added. Doyon appeared before the Senate hearings on the new law on behalf of the Quebec Immigration Lawyers' Association (l'AQAADI).
 
“You can’t tweak security certificates; you can’t tweak indefinite detention and deportation to torture,” said Mostafa Henaway of the Immigrant Workers Centre. “Justice requires that this system be done away with entirely. As an organization which works every day with immigrant communities, I can tell you that the message of this law and the way it was passed is very clear to immigrants: ‘Your fundamental rights will not be respected, your voices will not be listened to in the political process.’”
 
“The way in which the Senate pushed through the new legislation was a farce,” stated Warren Allmand, representing the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, a coalition of over 30 NGOs, unions, faith groups and other civil society organizations. Senate adopted the bill in less than a week, following just one day of hearings in which over twenty witnesses – all except Stockwell Day - called for Senate to oppose the law as unjust and unconstitutional.
 
“From the case of Maher Arar, from my own experience as Solicitor General of Canada, I know that CSIS and the RCMP make serious errors of fact. Without providing the person named in a certificate the opportunity to know the case against him, those errors cannot be discovered and justice will not be done. In my opinion, this is a real travesty of justice,” Allmand concluded.
 
Allmand was joined by the President of the Conseil centrale de Montréal (CSN), Gaétan Chateauneuf, in calling on the government to treat refugees, permanent residents and other non-citizens the same way that citizens are treated in such cases, using criminal law rather than immigration law.
 
“The consequences of the security certificate are so severe, that the process should, if anything, be more rigorous than criminal law,” agreed Sheikh Salam Elmenyawi, President of the Muslim Council of Montreal. “Labelling someone a threat to national security means destroying their reputation and putting their entire family at risk. It can lead to indefinite detention and even deportation to torture or death.”
 
“I invite all members of the press to closely follow this issue in the coming weeks. After pushing this unjust law through in a manner which so thoroughly disregarded democratic process, will the government now try to rush to deport these men?” asked Elmenyawi.
 
“Behind these legal questions are human lives,” said Charkaoui. “For five years my family and I have battled this thing, going all the way up to the Supreme Court, and winning. Now we find ourselves right back at the starting gate, facing going through all of this again! The toll on our lives has already been enormous. For us, it is unbearable,” he finished.

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Analysis of C-3
Background on Charkaoui case

More information: cell 514 222 0205

Source:
Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui
www.adilinfo.org
justiceforadil@riseup.net
tel. 514 848 7583