generalspeaking

Saturday, January 05, 2019

Canadian Support for Islamism

"I conclude that the security certificate filed by the minister is not reasonable and will be set aside."
"Classified reasons will also be issued and will include the information that cannot be disclosed for reasons of national security."
Federal Court Judge Dolores Hansen, May 2016

"[Jaballah’s rights were serially violated by the government, not only because of the use of the certificate regime but also due to the] repeated threats and attempts to deport Jaballah to Egypt where he faced a high risk of torture."
Civil lawsuit brought by Jaballah against the federal government

Mahmoud Jaballah speaks to a reporter outside the Federal Court building in Toronto in 2009. Jaballah, an Egyptian, was under a national security certificate because of alleged ties to Al-Qaeda. (Colin Perkel/Canadian Press)

Mahmoud Jaballah's entry to Canada along with his family of six children took place in May of 1996. When the family claimed refugee status asserting they had been persecuted by authorities in Egypt accusing him of connections to al-Qaeda, they presented with inauthentic Saudi Arabian passports. False claims and fake documentation represent grounds for refusal of entry and if discovered at some later date, revocation of landed immigrant status, permanent residence or citizenship, leading to deportation.

Seemingly unrelated to false documentation, but through aroused suspicions, it took little time before a national security certificate was issued against this man. Obviously the background for viewing him with such suspicion as to issue a certificate where classified evidence is kept secret from any accused, was the intelligence of his ties to terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, of 1998.

He was arrested in 1999 based on those suspicions though the man has claimed he has been falsely charged with any association with terrorist groups. A succession of three security certificates naming this man was signed by the federal government between 1999 and 2016, all of which were dismissed by federal courts on the basis of insufficient evidence. Anyone named in a certificate as posing a security risk to the country can face deportation under immigration law.

The Federal Court of Appeal, in October of 2016, placed the final denial in the federal government's case against Mahmoud Jaballah, halting a move to deport him back to his home country of Egypt where he claims he would be imprisoned and tortured. The result of the court denial of the federal case has become a predictable outcome in Canada, where Muslims seeking haven in the country claim to have been wronged by the government, and sue for damages.

Millions have been doled out in such cases, the most notorious such instance, that of Omar Khadr of Guantanamo infamy charged as a young member of al-Qaeda trained terrorists who lobbed a grenade that killed a U.S. army medic in a raid on a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, who received over $10-million in 'compensation' for his travail and the government of Canada's role in denying his 'constitutional rights'.

Continuing this trend, Jaballah has filed a statement of claim for himself, his wife and their six children to the total of $34-million with an additional $3.4-million tagged on for aggravated and punitive damages, filed in Ontario Superior Court. According to the statement of claim, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service began their investigation of the man, watching him, tapping his phone, interviewing him multiple times in 1998.

His first arrest took place in 1999 as a security risk to Canada, but he was released from detention and arrested once more in August 2001 on new evidence with a second certificate when six years were spent in detention, fighting the government's determination to deport him from Canada. He undertook two hunger strikes at the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre, protesting conditions of detention, in 2006 and 2007.

A third certificate signed by the government outlined details of the case that included the government's contention that Mahmoud Jaballah helped terrorist cells to publicize the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania where over 200 people were killed. Jaballah's lawyers were ultimately successful in arguing evidence presented was insufficient, including foreign-sourced intelligence claimed to have been obtained through torture.

According to the lawsuit, Jaballah's rights were violated by the federal government due to "repeated threats and attempts to deport Jaballah to Egypt where he faced a high risk of torture", and that his family suffered during his detention. Also named in the lawsuit was the information that one of his children had been deported in 2012 after being convicted of gang-related criminal offences.

An added testament to the quality of civil and civic obedience to Canadian law that this family exemplifies.The government's investigation was 'negligent, and complicit in human rights abuses typical in Egypt', claims the lawsuit, and that media coverage of those allegations against the man destroyed his reputation and "made him effectively unemployable".

So then, a family that should have been denied entry to Canada based on false documentation to begin with under Canada's immigration law, entered as a presumed escape on the part of the father whose terror-linked sympathies and actions made his presence in his country of birth -- struggling to cope with the presence of Islamist terrorism -- untenable, lest he pay the penalty there, for his decision to support terror.

And Canada ends up the beneficiary of his presence. A Canada whose Muslim population is swelling. A Muslim demographic among whom a greater proportion of gang members, petty criminals, drug pushers and wanna-be jihadists overwhelm their relative numbers in the general population. Where Canadian prisons are becoming breeding grounds for indoctrination into violent Islam. And Canadian tax money is being generously doled out to soothe the injured feelings of those held to account.