Associated Press
TORONTO: An attorney for an Egyptian terror suspect said Tuesday that a Canadian Federal Court judge would soon order him released from custody under strict bail conditions.
John Norris, an attorney for several of the five Arab Muslim men held under security certificates, said the judge would order Mahmoud Jaballah placed under house arrest.
He said Federal Court Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson is expected to release her reasons for the decision at a hearing March 22 in Ottawa, but in the meantime told the Canada Border Security Agency to prepare his home for detainment there.
It was quite clear she doesn t want to see this delayed any further, Norris said.
The decision comes nearly two weeks after the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the constitutionality of security certificates, which have been used since the 1970s in Canada to detain suspects who are deemed a threat to national security.
The court ruled it was a violation of Canada s Charter of Rights and Freedom to detain the men indefinitely without trial or access to the evidence against them. It gave Parliament a year to rewrite the part of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that covers the certificates.
None of the five Arab Muslim men held under security certificates has been charged with any crimes and they all are fighting deportation orders. Judges in four cases have ruled that the men should be released under house arrest while their cases work their way through the courts.
Jaballah has been detained since August 2001. The married father of six has long denied having any links to terrorism.
During a bail hearing last October, prosecutor Donald MacIntosh argued that no court-imposed conditions would be stringent enough to contain the risk that Jaballah posed.
He is a danger to national security, MacIntosh told the Federal Court. No terms and conditions could neutralize the threat.
MacIntosh said Jaballah had contacts with the London-based International Office for the Defense of Egyptian People after his arrival in Canada in 1996. He said the group was a front for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which he said was linked to Osama bin Laden s Al-Qaeda terror network.
His defense attorneys have argued there was no evidence to support the claims and Jaballah has denied having any contacts with the London group.
Swept up in Egypt s mass crackdown on Muslim extremists in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, Jaballah was detained several times. He was never charged with any crime but spent four years in jail in Egypt over the following decade.
Although he has not been allowed to see the evidence against him, Jaballah has argued that Canadian intelligence officials have relied on bad information from Cairo.
Jaballah, who claimed refugee status in Canada in 1996, said he would be tortured or killed if sent back to Egypt, a country with documented human-rights violations.
Once Jaballah is released, only two men will remain behind bars as a result of security certificates: Mohammad Mahjoub and Hassan Almrei. Mahjoub was also ordered released, but is still behind bars in a Kingston, Ontario, detainment center built specifically for the terror suspects.
Two others held under security certificates have already been released under strict house-arrest conditions: Mohamed Harkat, who is under house arrest in Ottawa, and Adil Charkaoui in Montreal.
