To the Editor

In his article "Divisive terror law losing traction," Colin Freeze (Globe and Mail, 21 September 2009) repeats assertions by government lawyers that, out of concern for human rights, the Federal Court is bent on forcing CSIS to "spill state secrets" in the Charkaoui case, to the detriment of the spy agency's sources of information and relationships with foreign spies.

This misrepresents the situation. It was not a zealous application of human rights principles which lead the Federal Court to order the disclosure of secret information in the Charkaoui case. It was a simple calculation, in which the two special advocates assigned to Charkaoui concurred, that the disclosure of that information would in no way compromise the national security of Canada. Judge Tremblay Lamer in fact goes out of her way in a court directive of 5 August 2009 to underscore the court's opinion that disclosure, in this case, would not affect national security.

Why CSIS chose to withdraw the information from Charkaoui's case, we do not know. Coming on the heels of the lie dectector scandal in the Harkat and Almrei cases, it does not seem far-fetched to imagine that CSIS's primary motivation was avoiding further scandal rather than protecting national security. On the contrary, any degree of knowledge of the string of scandals that have already emerged in Charkaoui's case - use of information obtained under torture; diplomatic assurances from Morocco; "discoveries" of "lost" information at strategic moments; destruction of evidence; leaks of secret reports - makes it impossible to uncritically accept the spy agency's assertions that its decision emanated from a concern for national security.

We do not know if, as Mr. Freeze believes, this turn of events spells an end to the security certificate regime (although we certainly hope it does). However, if it does, we believe it should come as a result of a debate on the real issues: the procedural abuses, permitted by a regime which gives CSIS free reign; and the rank injustice of this regime in the first place. Further prolonging the suffering of the Charkaoui family by a misplaced debate on disclosure would serve no interests in Canada but CSIS's own.

Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui