by Andrew Duffy Source: The Ottawa Citizen URL: [link] Date: November 22, 2012 OTTAWA — Ten years after Mohamed Harkat was arrested in Ottawa as a terrorist suspect, his deportation case is headed back to the Supreme Court of Canada. The country’s highest court announced Thursday that it will hear an appeal in his case. It means the Harkat case will become the first to test the constitutionality of the federal government’s revised security certificate law. The first edition of that law, used to deport foreign-born terror suspects, was struck down by the high court in February 2007 as fundamentally unjust. That ruling overturned a judge’s finding that Harkat was a terrorist threat. Parliament rewrote the law to ensure defendants have more information about the case against them, and better legal representation during secret hearings. But Harkat’s lawyers contend Parliament did not do enough. Harkat, they say, remains in the dark about key details of the case due to the still secretive legal process. The government has been trying to deport the Algerian-born Harkat since December 2002, when he was arrested and jailed on the strength of a security certificate.



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