His friends say you couldn't find a nicer guy. "He is a wonderful man, gentle, kind, intelligent, funny and thoughtful," said social worker Diana Ralph.

"I found him to be a likeable guy," said Alexandre Trudeau, who is making a sympathetic documentary about him. Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, the power couple of the left, have gone to bat for him, too.

Hassan Almrei does present a sympathetic figure. He is a soft-spoken, newly slender man (thanks to a protest fast) with a bushy black mustache and a furrowed brow. He doesn't look like someone who might plant a bomb in a subway; that makes him an ideal hero for people who say Canada is turning into a police state.

For nearly four years, Mr. Almrei, who is Syrian, has been held without charge in a Toronto jail, fighting deportation. This week, his lawyers are arguing that he deserves to get out on bail. The federal government argues that he's a national security risk.

Four other men, all Muslims, are in this same limbo. All have been detained on national security certificates, which allow the government to deport non-citizens if they pose a risk to the country. (Ernst Zundel was in the same fix until he was deported, but no celebrities showed up to post bail for him.)

Ms. Ralph, who has offered to take Mr. Almrei into her home, says: "I take him as a model of honesty." Well, not quite. In 1999, he lied his way into Canada on a false passport and claimed refugee status. He forgot to mention that he'd been a young mujahed in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, or that he'd gone to Tajikistan for jihad. And he admitted that, in Canada, he played a role in procuring a false passport for Nabil al-Marabh, an illegal immigrant who was later held in the United States on suspicion of terrorism, then deported to Syria, where he remains in detention.

Supporters of Canada's Secret Trial Five say detention amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe so. But even though all of them are free to return home at any time, none have done so. Possibly the prospect of a Syrian or Egyptian jail makes a Canadian jail seem nice. There's also lots to do here. The men have launched a series of legal appeals that, this being Canada, could go on forever.

Another of the five is Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan who was spotted at an al-Qaeda training camp in 1998 and who says Americans probably blew up the World Trade Center. From his Montreal jail cell, he appealed the constitutionality of his security certificate; in December, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled against him. That didn't stop him from applying for bail -- four times. He got it on the fourth try, after celebrities such as filmmaker Denys Arcand weighed in.

National security certificates, which date from 1991, are designed to prevent Canada from becoming a haven for terrorists by allowing the government to scoop them up and send them home. Still, it isn't easy; only a handful has ever been deported.

To obtain a certificate, the government must take its evidence to a federal judge, who weighs it in secret. The process isn't perfect, and parts of it could be more open. But don't buy the argument that civil liberties are being ground into the dust. Unlike Maher Arar, none of these men are citizens of Canada. They're all foreign nationals who've lied their way into the country. All will be able to drag out their cases for years. Even then, they won't be deported until the last judge decides that the risk they pose to Canada's security outweighs the risk that they might be tortured.

In 2001, Madam Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer of the Federal Court said she had "no hesitation" in concluding that the case against Mr. Almrei was reasonable. But, ultimately, it may be the Supreme Court that will have to figure out what to do with him. Meantime, it's not because due process has been denied him that he's still in jail. It's because due process is pretty much inexhaustible.

As for Alexandre Trudeau, I guess he's too young to recall his father's attitude toward terrorism. It was that other Trudeau who, when asked how far he was prepared to go during the FLQ crisis, replied: "Just watch me." Three days later, he declared the War Measures Act.

mwente at globeandmail dot ca

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