To the editor: While I agree with the Star's editorial supporting the Supreme Court's decision requiring CSIS to share ALL of its information in "security certificate" cases, your editorial nonetheless engages in the very kind of stereotyping that throws out the presumption of innocence and unfairly brands people. Specifically, you state that the court's ruling "reinforces the credibility of Canadian justice in dealing with those who hold our society in contempt." Why would you assume that those targetted by CSIS hold Canada in contempt, when in fact, it would appear that CSIS practices, such as destroying evidence or using information gleaned from torture, hold the values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in contempt?As Justice O'Connor stated in the Arar Commission report, the consequences of inaccurately labelling someone a threat can be enormous, and your assumptions unfairly portray the men who are subject to security certificates.

Perhaps your editorial writers have never met Mohammad Mahjoub or Mahmoud Jaballah, two Metro Toronto residents who have been subject to the secret hearing process for close to a decade. Loving fathers and committed community members, they have nonetheless faced brutal prison conditions (often years in solitary confinement) and are now under the most draconian house arrest conditions imaginable, all based on secret CSIS allegations neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see.

As someone who personally knows these men and their families, I have never heard a word of contempt from them. In fact, as refugees from torture in Egypt, both families came here seeking a new life and, despite all that the Canadian government has done to them, they still hold out hope for a regular life in a country they love, despite the fact that our government is working to deport them to torture.

We must also never forget that it was the spies at CSIS whose so-called "intelligence," shared with the RCMP, helped wrongfully brand Maher Arar as a threat to security, leading to his rendition to torture in Syria. This is also the agency that sought to have Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Montreal resident, illegally detained in Sudan, where he remains stranded after five years. And we certainly cannot forget that it was CSIS and the RCMP who also sent questions to Syrian interrogators even though this would likely result in the torture of three Canadians held and tortured there, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin.

In times of fear, the first thing to go is the presumption of innocence. Hopefully, the Star's coverage of these issues will stop drifting in that direction as well.

Matthew Behrens