Risk of "Unimaginable Horror"

"In the present case, Mr. Harkat benefited from a fair process. [Federal Court Justice Simon Noel] found that the evidence provided reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Harkat had been involved with terrorist organizations. He held that Mr. Harkat's behaviour and lies were consistent with the theory that he had come to Canada as a 'sleeper' agent for terrorist organizations."
Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin

"Sending a person with essentially a stamp saying we believe they're a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda to countries that don't have the sorts of protections that we have in our country ... can create a risk, or if not a risk, a certainty of unimaginable horror."
Norman Boxall, lawyer for Mohamed Harkat

Mohamed Harkat and his wife Sophie Lamarche Harkat are escorted by RCMP as they leave the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its decision on his case Wednesday May 14, 2014 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld 

Risks and scenes of "unimaginable horror" are precisely what intelligence agencies all over the world are alert to when it comes to intercession and intervention in the identification and arrest of individuals and groups whose agenda is that of jihad in violent Islamism. That agenda is one that oppresses and violates the human rights of people wishing to live in peace but who are assailed by atrocities depriving them of their lives.

Mr. Harkat originally entered Canada in 1995 on the basis of a Saudi Arabian passport that was false. Canadian Immigration law considers it a major offence to enter the country with a false passport. An offence sufficiently major that citizenship will be revoked when that fact has been established. He was granted refugee status on the basis of that passport. It has been twelve years since Mr. Harkat's arrest on a national security certificate in December 2002.

Since that time he has gained much sympathy over his plight as he insists he has never been associated with any terrorist group and all of the accusations levelled against him target a perfectly innocent man. He spent three years in prison, a year in solitary confinement and was held under house arrest for years, wearing a tracking bracelet removed in the last year. He had worked as a gas station attendant and a pizza delivery man, innocuous enough.

But he came to the attention of the Canadian security establishment, surely as a result of the company he kept and CSIS based a case against him relying on wiretapped telephone conversations recorded between 1996 and 1998. There were two informants whose witness were relied upon, though one failed a lie-detector test administered by CSIS. Denying all charges against him, Mr. Harkat insists his life will be endangered should he be extradited to his homeland, Algeria.

The Supreme Court of Canada has now upheld a lower court's finding characterizing the man as a liar and claiming him to be a sleeper agent for terrorist organizations with links to al-Qaeda. The constitutional challenge of the security certificate regime, updated by the Government of Canada on order of the Supreme Court now rejected his challenge, ruling that the process is entirely consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If Mr. Harkat can prove that should he be deported to Algeria his life would be in danger, he would be at risk of torture, there is a possibility, allowed the court, of a fresh court challenge. "If he is a sleeper cell, he's the Rip Van Winkle of it. It's hard for me to point to any risk. He's a public personality; I don't think he could ever operate as a sleeper cell", contended his lawyer of a client who had resided in Canada for 20 years, whose risk is "zero" but which does not erase his past.

Depending on the new rules for the security certificate reissued against Mr. Harkat, Judge Noel declared him an active and dangerous member of a terrorist network. The Federal Court of Appeal overturned that finding, claiming Mr. Harkat's right to a fair trial had been compromised. But the Supreme Court in its Wednesday decision concluded that written summaries provided by CSIS to Harkat's legal team were "sufficient to prevent significant prejudice to Mr. Harkat's ability to know and meet the case against him".

As Mohamed Harkat and his wife Sophie Lamarche received the news of the Supreme Court decision, Ms. Lamarche stated defiantly: "We will fight them all the way". That they have done, for the past dozen years.