Mcleans.ca, 25 June 2009

Adil Charkaoui, a Morocco-born Montreal resident, began a Canada-wide speaking tour last week to draw attention to the “nightmare” he endured after he was detained by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service six years ago for allegedly being an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. Charkaoui says after 9/11, CSIS agents—who believed he was associating with Muslims in Montreal with ties to extremists in North Africa—entered the pizzeria he owned and asked him “Where is Osama bin Laden hiding?” Not taking the query seriously, he said, “I told them he was in the basement, having a siesta.” Soon after, Charkaoui says they began interfering with his business. In 2003, he was detained under a security certificate law, and denied access to the evidence against him. After spending 21 months in prison, a Quebec judge released him on $50,000 bail on the condition that he agree to electronic surveillance. “This law is a medieval law,” he told a Toronto crowd last Thursday. “In a country like Canada, it is shameful.”