by Andrew Duffy
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
URL: [link]
Date: June 2, 2010


OTTAWA — Mohamed Harkat's lawyer told a Federal Court judge he cannot rely on the accuracy of 13 intercepted phone conversations summarized by Canada's spy agency.

The summaries potentially offer evidence that the Algerian-born Harkat lied to the court about his links to Islamic extremism.

But Harkat lawyer Matt Webber argued the summaries hold little evidentiary value since the spy agency destroyed the original recordings and translations of the alleged conversations.

"These summaries really have no place in a court of law," Webber said in his final argument Tuesday. "It doesn't deserve to be called evidence."

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) used to routinely destroy material since it considered evidence-gathering the job of the police, not an intelligence agency.

Two years ago, however, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered CSIS to stop destroying original notes and recordings.

In the Harkat case, Webber told Judge Simon Noel, CSIS already suffers from a serious credibility problem. Last year, it was revealed the agency did not disclose for years that one of its key informants in the Harkat case had failed a lie-detector test.

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