Original author: Jan Ravensbergen
Source: The National Post
URL: [link]
Date: October 10, 2007

Adil Charkaoui, a Montrealer under a federal security certificate, will have to keep wearing a Global Positioning System device that has monitored his every movement since Feb. 17, 2005, a Federal Court of Canada judge ruled Wednesday morning.

"The request for Mr. Charkaoui's provisional liberation without conditions is denied," Judge Simon Noel concluded in a 26-page judgment.

Mr. Charkaoui remains unable to travel outside Montreal without Mr. Noel's permission. He is also required to be supervised at work, and accompanied at all times by specified people when outside his home."It could be that in the future certain of his preventive conditions would be amended," Mr. Noel ruled, adding that "the court has always invited the parties to discuss this with the goal of arriving at an agreement that could be ratified" by a judge.

However, Mr. Noel added, the request on which Wednesday's decision is based "does not deal with this situation. The court is requested to annul all of the conditions."

Mr. Charkaoui is a Moroccan-born permanent resident of Canada who has been fighting possible deportation.

He had been imprisoned in May 2003 for 21 months, until early 2005, amid allegations that he was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last February that the security-certificate process used against Charkaoui violated the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Canada's highest court gave Parliament one year to draft a new approach.

Failing that, the provision will expire.

Mr. Charkaoui's lawyers argued before Mr. Noel that since the process under which his movements are restricted has been ruled unconstitutional, any conditions imposed on him are illegal.

Mr. Charkaoui has also demanded, repeatedly, that all evidence against him be made public.

janr at thegazette dot canwest dot com

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