October 4, 2011, Carmen Cheung, BCCLA
http://nationalsecurity.bccla.org/2011/10/04/whispers-and-innuendo/

Today, the BCCLA wrote to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety about a recent government leak of purported intelligence information implicating two Canadians in a terrorist plot. The contents of the leak, the timing of it, and the government’s public statements in response to the whole affair all raise serious concerns, including whether the Canadian public can truly be informed via selective leaking of cherry-picked information.

In August, La Presse, a Montreal newspaper, published an article describing an alleged conspiracy between Adil Charkaoui and Abousfian Abdelrazik to place an explosive device on an aircraft. The alleged conspiracy was outlined in a document leaked to La Presse, which purported to be a 2004 report from CSIS summarizing conversation reportedly intercepted in 2000.

Coalition calls for public inquiry into second leak

Montreal, 10 August 2011 -- The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui is outraged by the leak of a secret document containing completely false allegations against Montrealer Adil Charkaoui, whose security certificate case was struck down in 2009. Noting that an almost identical leak happened in 2007, the Coalition is calling for a public inquiry and asking other Canadians to join it in challenging Minister Jason Kenney's unacceptable comments.

"These allegations are false and constitute a wholly unmerited attack on my reputation and my security," said Mr. Charkaoui. "I spent six years of my life proving my innocence in a secret court process when I didn't even know what I was accused of. After the federal court revoked the security certificate against me, I expressed the hope that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life as an 'ex-suspected'. Now, almost two years after the court cleared my name, I find myself again in the court of public opinion. This must stop."

Aug 7th, 2011, Maher Arar, Prism Magazine
http://prism-magazine.com/2011/08/bomb-plot-leak-to-la-presse-and-the-mi...

The latest bomb plot information (or misinformation) that was leaked to La Presse implicating both Charkaoui and Abousfian should make every Canadian concerned about how national security information is being disseminated in the public domain without checks and balances, and most importantly, without going through the proper judicial channels.

To start with let us briefly and carefully review this information which is now found on almost every major news web site in Canada.

In summary, the information, part of which seems to be recycled, relates to an alleged “encrypted” phone conversation that took place in the year 2000 during which both Charkaoui and Abousfian discussed a potential bomb plot to blow up an unspecified commercial plane. Moreover, it states that shortly after the interception of this alleged phone conversation CSIS found traces of explosives in Abousfian’s car.

Without arriving to a conclusion on the credibility of this information, which only a judge with full access to all documents can do, the timing and the nature of this leak raises very important questions of national importance:

The Canadian Press, 21 May 2011

OTTAWA — A watchdog report has found that Canada's spy agency -- CSIS -- hasn't lived up to a Supreme Court ruling.

The ruling was from the case of Montrealer Adil Charkaoui, who was arrested for suspected terrorist links.

He was set free in 2009 after the case against him buckled.

The high court ruled that CSIS violated its legal obligation to keep documentation and disclose notes and other material during judicial proceedings.

CSIS made it policy to file notes and other information.
But CSIS inspector general Eva Plunkett says when she asked for original notes cited in agency reports, the spy agency couldn't produce them in some cases.

She says CSIS later determined its own reports were wrong and that no notes had been taken to support the information in them.

CSIS spokeswoman Isabelle Scott says the agency has since corrected the errors in its processes.

CBC.ca, June 26, 2009

U.S. authorities ordered an Air Canada flight carrying a Montreal man accused of having terrorist links back to New Brunswick, where he was ordered off the flight, the man said Thursday.

Adil Charkaoui was returning to Montreal from Fredericton on June 3 as part of a cross-country tour to denounce Canada's security certificate process and restore his reputation.

The landed immigrant from Morocco spent two years in Canadian detention on a ministerial security certificate after his 2003 arrest on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda. Charkaoui, who denies having any links to the terrorist group, was released under tight restrictions two years later, including wearing a GPS locator on his ankle.

Charkaoui says he was about 45 minutes into the flight, which crossed into U.S. airspace, when U.S. officials ordered it to turn back to New Brunswick.

He and two agents from the Canada Border Services Agency who were accompanying him were removed from the flight when it landed in Fredericton.

Charkaoui and the two agents then drove the roughly 700 kilometres back to Montreal.

U.S. had cleared flight

Was It Something I Wrote?
     
Hernando Calvo Ospina, Progreso-Weekly, May 4, 2009

Air France Flight 438, from Paris, was to land at Mexico City at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 18. Five hours before landing, the captain's voice announced that U.S. authorities had prohibited the plane from flying over U.S. territory. The explanation: among the passengers aboard was a person who was not welcome in the United States for reasons of national security.

A few minutes later, the same voice told the startled passengers that the plane was heading for Fort-de-France, Martinique, because the detour the plan needed to take to reach its destination was too long and the fuel was insufficient.

The stopover in that French territory in the Caribbean would be only to refuel the plane. Exhaustion was becoming an issue among the passengers. But the central question, spoken in undertones, was the identity of the "terrorist" passenger, because if the "gringos" say it, "it must be because he must be a terrorist."

Looking at those of us sitting in the back of the plane, two passengers said no terrorist could be there because "nobody there looks like a Muslim."

Flight from Halifax to Montreal passed over Maine
 
CATHERINE SOLYOM, The Gazette, June 26, 2009

Adil Charkaoui thought he had successfully made the switch from suspected terrorist to public speaker - until U.S. authorities ordered his plane to turn around and kick him off.

Charkaoui, a Moroccan-born father of three, was on his way home to Montreal June 3 from Fredericton, the second stop on his cross-country speaking tour, with two escorts from the Canada Border Services Agency.

The subject of a security certificate since 2003, it is the first time Charkaoui has been able to travel freely outside of Montreal, to denounce the process that kept him in prison for two years and under strict surveillance for another four years, without knowing the evidence against him.

In February, a Federal Court judge removed most of the conditions imposed on him, including that he be escorted at all times outside his home by a family member. If in 2003 he fit the profile of an Al-Qa'ida sleeper agent, the judge said, he doesn't anymore - he is too well-known.

Chris Simkins, Voice of America, April 25, 2009

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, says the government's terrorist watch list of known or suspected terrorists has grown to one million entries. The list - used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies to prevent terrorist acts - has been growing steadily since 2003 when the FBI set up a terrorism screening center to store, analyze and share information about suspected terrorists. While the list is touted by the FBI as an important counterterrorism tool, it has generated controversy and complaints.

Caught in a security net

For some travelers, passing through airport security isn't easy. David Nelson says he is often detained at check points. "I said what do you mean, terrorist? Do I look like a terrorist," he asked. "I mean come on now."

Another man called David Nelson also has been routinely detained by security screeners. They are among hundreds of travelers named David Nelson who have been stopped because they are on the U.S. government's so-called "No Fly" list of known or suspected terrorists.

The list has been a source of frequent complaints by thousands of innocent travelers whose names have appeared on the list.

The No Fly list

THE CANADIAN PRESS, 26 June 2009

HALIFAX, N.S. — ... Adil Charkaoui says he was recently asked to leave a flight from Fredericton to Montreal, but wasn't given an explanation for his removal.

Charkaoui, who is on a national speaking tour, says the flight was 45 minutes into a June 3 trip to Montreal when it returned and landed in Fredericton.

He says he was the only person asked to leave the plane.

Charkaoui is a landed immigrant from Morocco who was arrested in Montreal in 2003 under security-certificate legislation.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked today about the incident at a news conference in Halifax.

He says he doesn't know much about it but Charkaoui is on a no-fly list in the United States and Canada has a security obligation to enforce it.

Charkaoui wouldn't identify the airline he was travelling on and insists he is not on a U.S. no-fly list.

He says he believes the flight was likely in U.S. airspace when the plane turned back for Canada.

In February, a Federal Court judge eased some of the conditions imposed on Charkaoui.

The judge said some of the restrictions had become disproportionate given the number of years that had passed since he first faced terrorist allegations.

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service, June 15, 2009

The Conservative government's national security agenda has been set back by a steady losing streak in the Federal Court, a trend that analysts attribute to an emboldened bench that is finding its voice and growing out of a tendency to defer to lawmakers as it did in the early years after 9/11.

In the last two months, the traditionally cautious court has issued stinging decisions ordering the government to repatriate terror suspect Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay and bring Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik home from Sudan.

Judges have also issued three biting critiques of CSIS, accusing the spy agency of possibly lying to the court about its intelligence information and being complicit in torture of Canadians abroad.

"It's the end of the honeymoon period -- when national security trumped everything," said Michael Byers, a civil libertarian and a political scientist at University of British Columbia.