by Colin Freeze
Source: The Globe and Mail
URL: [link]
Date: January 15, 2009


Federal agents keeping tabs on two Egyptians suspected of links to terrorism will continue snapping surreptitious pictures of the suspects, keep following their footsteps, and carry on with seizing, scanning and archiving every piece of mail they receive.

Federal Court Judge Anne MacTavish ruled in a decision Thursday that none of these invasive measures violate the rights of the men, who had been arguing for a relaxation of the most stringent house-arrest conditions ever ordered by Canadian courts.

Lawyers for Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah failed to sway the court that federal agents should ease up on the photos, overt surveillance and mail seizures. The men had not been contesting other measures, such as the electronic ankle bracelets they wear at all times, their bugged phone lines or the bans on making unapproved excursions outside their homes.

The two decisions, each 55 pages, were released Thursday by Judge MacTavish and shed considerable light on the daily realities the men face as they are being monitored.The ruling states that:

* Neither suspect “could have any reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to his mail” given the release conditions;

* Agents have taken more than 30 photographs of the inside of the Mahjoub home, including some of a Nintendo Wii video game, which amounted to a technical breach. “A Wii device evidently has Internet capacity ... it appear to be uncontested the device was not kept in a secure location as mandated by the Court's order,” the ruling states.

* Photos were also taken of the Jaballah family as they moved houses, though agents stopped when a “13-year-old son approached the officers and asked them what they were doing.”

The cost of the constant surveillance is being borne by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) at an estimated $500,000 to $1-million a year for each suspect.

Border guards are doing the job because the Canadian government is still technically treating their cases as deportation matters, even though all attempts to remove the suspects have been stymied by the likelihood of foreign torture.

Mr. Mahjoub and Mr. Jaballah separately came to Canada in the late 1990s to seek asylum. They claimed they suffered years of torture and arbitrary detention in Egypt, as the Cairo regime rounded up Islamic fundamentalists.

By 2000, both were jailed in Canada for alleged links to al-Qaeda, under the federal government's controversial security-certificate law.

A decade's worth of legal battles has failed to resolve the fundamental question of what Canada ought to do with these men and three other security-certificate detainees in similar straits. Both Mr. Mahmoub and Mr. Jaballah spent years in prison before being released in 2007, on the condition they submit to constant surveillance.

While Judge MacTavish had few problems with the way the CBSA was doing its job, she did express frustration that there had been a “conflict of evidence” about the purpose behind some security measures.

She also did note one official testified CBSA officers would endeavour to be “more reflective” of the way their surveillance may affect the men and their families.

The Toronto office performing the monitoring on Mr. Mahjoub and Mr. Jaballah will soon have a third suspect to keep tabs on. Earlier this month a Federal Court judge ordered Syrian Hassan Almrei released on even more stringent conditions.

The Federal Court announced Thursday it would hold a hearing at the end of January as to whether “information disclosed to the [security-certificate detainees] should be placed on the Court's public files.”

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