CSIS’s branding of Egyptian as security risk not ‘reasonable’
Posted December 5, 2011 8:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Lawyers for an Egyptian man who was labelled a threat to Canadian security and jailed will ask a judge Monday to lift all release conditions imposed on him.
Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub has never been charged with anything since he was first detained in May 2000 on a national security certificate.
He was released on stringent conditions seven years later and placed under house arrest, but the conditions were so strict that Mahjoub opted to go back to prison in March 2009 to spare his family the grief.
Mahjoub, a 51-year-old father of three, was again released after eight months under strict conditions, but allowed to live in an apartment.
Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, warned that Mahjoub could still engage in activities that threaten the security of Canada or another country.
“The service assesses that Mahjoub had, and may still have, connections to [terrorist organizations],” CSIS claimed in an updated assessment last month.
“It remains a possibility that Mahjoub, if released unmonitored and without conditions, may re-engage in activities that constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Paul Slansky, one of Mahjoub’s lawyers, called the CSIS assessment too vague to be used as grounds for detention or bail conditions.
“When you’re talking about the ‘possibility’ that someone ‘may’ be a threat, that is clearly not reasonable grounds, Slansky said in an interview.
The conditions imposed on Mahjoub include surveillance of his residence, a curfew and severe restrictions on where he can go. Expert submissions to the court call them “among the most invasive in Canadian legal history — prying into every recess” of Mahjoub’s life.
Being subject to a national security certificate allows for indefinite detention without charge or trial of foreign nationals pending deportation, but Mahjoub argues he would be tortured if sent back to Egypt.
Mahjoub is still contesting the reasonableness of the national security certificate itself.
The certificate was imposed in 2008 after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the one he was slapped with in 2000 was unconstitutional.
