by Jane Armstrong and Colin Freeze
Source: The Globe and Mai
URL: [link]
Date: January 5, 2010

With the power of security certificates being nullified in the courts, Ottawa is wielding a rarely used section of federal immigration law in their place to ensure that 25 migrants they suspect are Tamil Tigers remain behind bars.

Starting as early as this month, secret evidence will be used in closed hearings at the Immigration and Refugee Board in Vancouver. Government lawyers will introduce evidence they hope will persuade the board to continue the incarceration of about two dozen Tamil migrants, who arrived in a ship off Canada's West Coast last fall claiming to be refugees from postwar Sri Lanka.

Unlike ordinary detention hearings, these sessions are closed to the public, to the migrants involved and to their lawyers, and the evidence given is secret. Special advocates, appointed by the government, represent the migrants' interests.

The hearings, which are permissible under Section 86 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, are akin to watered-down security certificate evidence. Two security certificate cases have recently been defeated in the courts, with judges criticizing federal agents for relying on dubious intelligence, questionable informants and incomplete notes. In December, the Federal Court of Canada quashed the certificate against Syrian-born Toronto resident Hassan Almrei, and in September, Moroccan-born Montreal resident Adil Charkaoui was cleared after the government withdrew its certificate evidence against him rather than subject it to scrutiny.

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