Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press, 13 March 2010 http://www.thestar.com/mobile/canada/article/779433

MONTREAL–A simple "sorry" and an offer to pay his legal fees might have sufficed, but Adil Charkaoui said he didn't even get that courtesy from the federal government.

So the Moroccan-born Montrealer who was accused by Ottawa of being a terrorist and who spent several years living under tight restrictions believes he was left with little choice but to sue the federal government.

Charkaoui said Friday he intends to sue for $24.5 million to restore his reputation after failing to get an apology from Ottawa.

He said the civil suit, filed in Quebec Superior Court on Feb. 22, is not about the money.

"I'm doing it to clear my name. This is very important for me," Charkaoui told The Canadian Press in a phone interview between teaching classes.

He said he sent a letter asking for an apology, his Canadian citizenship and compensation for lost income and legal fees after a federal judge quashed a security certificate against him.

The response he says he received was that the government was just doing its job. "To me, it meant `Go to hell,'" Charkaoui said.

"This is about accountability. I want to restore my name and they made a mistake and destroyed my life in Canada and outside Canada and they have to pay for what they did."

Independently of the decision about the certificate, which could come out as early as Wednesday, Adil Charkaoui’s lawyers have asked Federal Court Judge Tremblay Lamer to sanction the government for the many violations committed in his case, including use of information obtained under torture, use of unreliable information, lies, and bad faith.

Read motion here.

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.

Court Hearings in Charkaoui case

Tuesday, 10 and Wednesday, 11 March from 9:30 am
80 McGill St., metro Square Victoria
(If you come late, please call 514 222 0205 to make sure the hearings are still on.)

Although there was another significant victory in the fight for justice and equality last month when the conditions imposed on Adil Charkaoui were substantially reduced, his struggle against the unconstitutional (in)security certificate is far from over. This coming week, on 10 and 11 March, his lawyers will be in court to argue several important legal questions which will set the stage for the coming months in his case, and potentially have a broad impact on the rights of many people.

These include important questions relating to:

A lot has happened in all five security certificate cases in the past months, while in the next few months, we expect to see decisions which could decide the fates of the secret trial five and their families. For the individuals and families imprisoned in this indefinite nightmare, it continues to be devastating; a burden that is extremely difficult to carry alone. We hope you can respond to the call for solidarity at the end of this message.

*The Dance of Disclosure*

On learning in February 2007 that the Supreme Court considered the security certificate process to be unconstitutional, the Canadian government adopted an "add and shake well" approach: add special advocate, shake thoroughly (especially the victims), and continue as though everything is fine.

YOUR PRESENCE IS NEEDED IN COURT

Federal Court Hearing
Wednesday, 3 September 2008, 9:30 am
30 McGill Street, Montreal (Metro Square Victoria)

Please come out to court in a simple, concrete act of solidarity with the Charkaoui family and others who are being subject to arbitrary detention and threatened with torture in the name of "national security".

The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui is calling on CSIS, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and Minister of Immigration Diane Finley to review Charkaoui's file for other destroyed evidence and to confirm that they will implement Thursday's Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court of Canada handed Charkaoui a second victory Thursday in his lengthy struggle against the immigration "security certificate": "We have concluded that Mr. Charkaoui's appeal succeeds. In our view, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is bound to disclose to the ministers responsible all information in its possession regarding the person named in a security certificate," (2) wrote the nine judges in a unanimous decision.

"Today we are calling on CSIS to actually apply the ruling," said Marie-Eve Lamy, a spokesperson for the Coalition. "They are nice principles, but meaningless if not applied. Will CSIS show us evidence that the policy has changed? Will they provide a timeline to implement the policy?"

The Coalition was not able to reach CSIS's media liaison, Manon Bérubé, yesterday to get a response to these questions.

Update in Charkaoui file.

BIAS NO OBSTACLE: COURT CLEARS WAY FOR SECRET TRIAL PROCESS

Inconvenience to government outweighs threat of torture and loss of liberty for (Muslim) family

On 12 June, the Federal Court ruled that the review of Adil Charkaoui's security certificate should proceed even though the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the implications of the fact that CSIS destroyed evidence in his file.

Charkaoui's lawyer had argued that it does not make sense for the courts to evaluate the case against him before the Supreme Court decides whether this case is, in the first place, the result of a biased investigation. However, there were several indications during the hearing that doubt about the legality of the evidence was not going to stand in the way of rapid 'progress' on the case.

Judge Lemieux opened the hearings by repeating all the unproven, vague allegations against Charkaoui, "just to put everyone in context". He repeated the allegations twice more during the hearing, ensuring that no one would forget that Charkaoui has been labelled with the t-word.

Luis Millan, Lawyers Weekly, May 16 2008

Adil Charkaoui, a Montreal terror suspect-cum-French school teacher, has filed a notice of motion before the Federal Court of Canada seeking a declaratory judgment declaring Bill C-3, Canada’s revamped security certificate regime, to be unconstitutional.

Charkaoui, whose security certificate was renewed on the same day that the federal government enacted An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (certificate and special advocate) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, is also seeking an interim order that will lift, if not relax, stringent bail conditions that includes a curfew, bans on Internet and cell phone use, and the wearing of a GPS tracking anklet. A Moroccan-born permanent resident of Canada, Charkaoui was arrested in May 2003 under a security certificate, which allows the federal government to detain non-citizens indefinitely under threat of deportation, and held in detention for 26 months before being released on February 2005 under strict court-ordered conditions.

February 27, 2008

Chief Justice Allan Lutfy,
Federal Court of Canada
Ottawa, ON

Dear Chief Justice Lutfy,

We are writing with the profoundest of concerns about the unprecedented placement on the front page of the Federal Court website of the public summaries of the security intelligence reports with respect to the five men subject to security certificate.