Marooned for five years, Abousfian Abdelrazik gets $100 a month from Canada to survive, but no passport or clearance to go home

Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, February 16, 2008

Months after his arrest on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, Abu Zubaydah -- a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant -- was flown to a secret CIA prison.

He was strapped to an inclined board by CIA interrogators. His mouth and nose were covered with cellophane and water was forced into his throat to simulate the terror that a drowning man experiences.

CIA director Michael Hayden admitted earlier this month that Mr. Zubaydah and two other al-Qaeda suspects were subjected to this kind of "waterboarding" in the year that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

It was necessary, he told the Senate select committee on intelligence, because U.S. officials knew little about the terrorist organization and feared another attack.

13 February 2008, JIM BRONSKILL, CP

OTTAWA -- An investigation by the watchdog over the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concludes the spy agency "uses information obtained by torture" -- perhaps its bluntest assessment of CSIS's intelligence-gathering practices to date.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee, which began looking into the issue two years ago, stops short of accepting Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland's assertion CSIS had shown a "total lack of concern" about evidence possibly gathered through coercive means.

But it finds that CSIS's concern has focused on the impact torture might have on the reliability of information it uses, rather than obligations under the Charter of Rights, the Criminal Code and international treaties "that absolutely reject torture."

Court to be asked to quash certificate, rule on CSIS conduct

Richard Foot, The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, January 31, 2008

Adil Charkaoui, the Montreal immigrant and accused al-Qaeda sympathizer, returns to the Supreme Court today to try to quash the federal government's bid to deport him to Morocco under a controversial security certificate.

While supporters rally outside the Supreme Court, Mr. Charkaoui's lawyers will also ask the country's top judges to rule on the overall conduct of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service during its investigation of Mr. Charkaoui since 2001.

Jonathan Montpetit, The Canadian Press, 27 January 2008

MONTREAL - The sudden appearance of a damning CSIS report that paints alleged terrorist Adil Charkaoui as a jihadist insider is feeding claims by Charkaoui and his supporters of a smear campaign, while also raising questions about security at Canada's spy service.

CSIS' assistant director of intelligence admitted earlier this month to a federal court judge that the service had recently "discovered" a report of an April 2001 interview with Charkaoui.

The interview did not form part of the evidence used by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to detain Charkaoui under a security certificate in 2003, even though it deals with his purported extensive knowledge of Islamic-extremist circles in Montreal.

How Benamar Benatta 'disappeared' after 9/11. The Canadian government sent him to the U.S. where he was accused of being behind the 9/11 bombings: 'The way they accused me, I thought my life was over'
 
Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen, January 26, 2008

Toronto's Benamar Benatta calls himself a forgotten victim of Sept. 11.

Mr. Benatta, 33, a former Algerian air force lieutenant, also has the dubious distinction of being the first victim of Canada's sometimes overzealous security response to the U.S. terror attacks.

Former Ottawa engineer Maher Arar is the best known victim of Canada's post-9/11 national security excesses. A secretive federal inquiry is now exploring what happened to three other Arab Canadians -- Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin -- who, like Mr. Arar, say they were tortured in Syria based on faulty Canadian intelligence.

Montreal, 23 January 2008 -- The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui
deplores the attack on Mr. Charkaoui's reputation in an article by Graeme
Hamilton which appeared in the National Post today under a sensationalist
headline. This attack follows the publication of other defamatory
allegations against Mr. Charkaoui this past June in the Montreal newspaper
La Presse, after the criminal leak of a secret, CSIS-sourced document. The
Coalition repeats its call for a government inquiry into the actions of CSIS
in Charkaoui's case.

The National Post article is based on a public summary of an alleged
interview with Mr. Charkaoui in 2001 which was disclosed earlier this month to the
Federal Court in a secret hearing. The interview was not provided to the
Ministers who signed Mr. Charkaoui's certificate, nor previously to the

Reporters ordered to reveal sources

TU THANH HA, Globe and Mail, January 19, 2008

MONTREAL -- The Montreal newspaper La Presse will appeal a judgment ordering two of its reporters to answer questions about who leaked them a damaging document about terror suspect (("terror suspect": Charkaoui has never been charged with anything, and "terror" is not even defined in the law under which he has been arrested)) Adil Charkaoui.

In a ruling yesterday, Mr. Justice Simon Noël of the Federal Court said that finding the sources behind a June 22 La Presse story that says Mr. Charkaoui spoke to an associate about hijacking a plane is the only way to address Mr. Charkaoui's contention that he was the victim of a smear campaign by government officials.

Judge orders reporters to reveal Charkaoui sources

Sue Montgomery, Canwest News Service, 18 January 2008

MONTREAL - A Federal Court judge has ordered two reporters from Montreal's La Presse to reveal their sources for a damning article about Adil Charkaoui, a Montreal man arrested in 2003 under a security certificate and accused of having ties to terrorists.

Charkaoui's rights and the administration of justice take precedence over freedom of the press and protection of sources, Judge Simon Noel wrote in his judgment, released Friday.

While the courts try not to obstruct the work of journalists, this was an "exceptional case requiring a solution out of the ordinary," Noel said.

The newspaper said it would appeal Noel's decision.