by Janice Tibbetts
Source: Canwest News Service
URL: [link]
Date: June 30, 2009


OTTAWA — Lawyers for two foreign terror suspects said Tuesday the cases against the men should be dropped in light of new revelations that Canada's spy agency admitted, for the second time in a month, that its intelligence sources were tainted.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service's faulty information indicates there is a systemic problem with the agency's credibility that further undermines the secretive federal program of issuing security certificates, say lawyers Lorne Waldman and Norm Boxall.

"It is obviously a very, very serious problem and it goes to the heart of the administration of justice," said Waldman.

He will ask a judge next week to quash the security certificate against Hassan Almrei, a Toronto man Ottawa is seeking to deport on suspicion of having terrorist ties.

The controversial certificates allow judges to consider information behind closed doors on whether non-Canadian terror suspects should be deported.

Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote Waldman this week telling him that CSIS has admitted that one of its informants against Almrei is considered "deceptive" and another source never took a lie-detector test, despite earlier CSIS assertions that he had passed."It really casts into doubt the viability of any secret process in my view," said Waldman. "If the intelligence agencies are incapable putting forward in a secret process evidence that is completely candid and accurate, they shouldn't be allowed to adduce evidence in secret."

Almrei was arrested in 2001 and detained until six months ago without trial and without knowing the full case against him.

The latest blow to the spy agency's credibility follows public revelations last month that CSIS officials misled the Federal Court in another security certificate case involving Algerian Mohamed Harkat. The agency told another federal judge that its confidential informant against Harkat had failed a polygraph test.

"The fact that this has occurred more than once certainly leads to an inference that CSIS has a serious problem," said Boxall, Harkat's lawyer.

Proceedings against Harkat have been temporarily suspended and Boxall said he will try to convince the judge, at a hearing scheduled for next January, that the case against Harkat should be quashed.

"Obviously security agencies need to have secrecy and confidentiality to work but at the same time reliance on secrecy to cover up one's mistakes or errors is not a bona fide claim of that right," said Boxall.

A lawyer for CSIS, describing the security lapse in the Harkat case as "inexcusable," told the Federal Court in early June that the agency is now reviewing information given to the court in the cases of five Muslim men who had security certificates issued against them.

The agency had no further comment Tuesday, but Boxall said that CSIS has to "come forward" to explain its missteps.

Boxall also said that there should be an independent inquiry into CSIS's bungling because "any process where persons investigate themselves is inherently suspect and inadequate."

Lawyers for the other security-certificate detainees could not be reached for comment Tuesday on whether they will seek to have the cases thrown out, based on CSIS's recent track record.

The three other men named in certificates are Moroccan-born Adil Charkaoui, and Egyptians Mahmoud Jaballah and Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub.

National security experts have repeatedly said that greater oversight of the spy agency is needed to restore public trust, in light of a string of court rulings in the last year that have lambasted CSIS on several fronts.

While the Security Intelligence Review Committee is mandated to oversee the agency, critics have maintained it does not have the power or access it needs to do a proper job.

Justice Dennis O'Connor's report on 2006 report into the treatment of Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar called for a new and strengthened national agency to keep an eye on CSIS.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said that he is awaiting the imminent report on the 1985 Air India bombing before striking a new oversight agency.

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