Original author: Canadian Press (CP)
Source: The Brandon Sun
URL: [link]
Date: September 27th, 2005


TORONTO (CP) - In the years since renegade airliners toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center, debate has raged about whether national security trumps the constitutional rights of a prisoner who is believed to have links to terrorism.

But for the handful of prisoners in Canada who have already spent years in provincial jails that are woefully ill-suited to their indefinite sentences, the larger debate about constitutional rights is taking a back seat to a more pressing issue: where to put them.

"Whatever somebody is accused of, they're human beings with human rights," said lawyer Barbara Jackman, who has represented three of the four men currently detained in provincial remand facilities under security certificates.Egyptian refugee Mohammad Mahjoub was near death over the weekend when he finally gave up a 79-day hunger strike. He suffers from hepatitis C, contracted in jail, as well as a knee injury and needed specialized medical care typically unavailable in the provincial facility.

"Mr. Mahjoub and the other security certificate detainees are long-term detainees in a place that doesn't have the facilities to deal with them," Jackman said.

Mahjoub is one of five alleged Islamic extremists being held without charge under suspicion that they have links to terrorism. The threat of torture upon their return home has confounded deportation efforts.


Their cases, meanwhile, have taken years to wind through a complex federal system for immigrants being held on security certificates.

Mahjoub has spent five years at Toronto's Metro West Detention Centre, where Syrian Hassan Almrei, and Egyptian Mahmoud Jaballah are also detained. Algerian Mohammed Harkat is in an Ottawa facility.

The fifth man, Adil Charkaoui, a Montreal resident born in Morocco, was released in February under strict bail conditions.

None of them fit the conventional system, since they face no charges; federal institutions are reserved for those who have been convicted of criminal offences. Lawyers like Jackman complain that's unfair.

"If you think you've got enough evidence to show they meet the definition of someone who is a terrorist or involved in terrorist activities, then try them under the criminal law," she said.

Instead, the men are housed indefinitely in remand facilities under an agreement between Ottawa and the Ontario government. Ottawa pays the province a daily rate to take care of them.

But the deal with Ottawa didn't anticipate keeping prisoners for years on end, an Ontario government spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"Usually immigration detainees aren't with us in our custody for extended periods of time - not the years we're seeing," said Julia Noonan of Ontario's Ministry of Correctional Services.

"This is something we haven't had to deal with in the past."

Advocates call it appalling that the prisoners are denied access to programming that's available even to convicted killers housed under the federal penitentiary system.

"It's just an insensitivity to these people because they aren't citizens," Jackman said. "They don't treat Canadians this way."

Noonan said Ontario and the federal government are in talks about the best way to care for prisoners who are being held under security certificates, a tiny but high-profile segment of the provincial jail population.

"It is something that we are continuing to discuss with the federal government because they are different from a normal immigration detainee," she said.

But Alex Swann, spokesman for federal public safety minister Anne McLellan, said such inmates are rare enough cases that there are no immediate plans to change the way they are detained.

"We can discuss options but only in so far as practical," Swann said. "Right now we're doing what we have the means to do."

The goal in such cases is deportation, not rehabilitation, he added

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