A Moroccan extremist faction suspected of carrying out the March 11 bombings in Madrid had a sleeper cell in Montreal and Ottawa, according to a Moroccan press report.

The newspaper also claimed that Adil Charkaoui, the Montrealer held on a security certificate and alleged by authorities to be an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, is one of two members of the Canadian cell of that extremist group.

Yesterday's edition of Aujourd'hui Le Maroc said the information was given to investigators by Nouredine Nfia, an imprisoned leader of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.

Mr. Charkaoui, the newspaper said, was in charge of logistics, sent a laptop computer to the group, and twice wired $2,000 (U.S.) to it.

The other Canadian sleeper agent was a 28-year-old Ottawa resident who was identified only as "Abdeslam the Canadian," it said.

Mr. Charkaoui's relatives denied the story. "It's very serious what they claim. Those are lies," Mr. Charkaoui's sister, Hind, said. "My brother would never give money to criminals."

The account could have stemmed from bogus confessions extracted from Mr. Nfia under torture, she said. Several human-rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have expressed concern about increased use of torture in Morocco after bombings last year in Casablanca.

Ms. Charkaoui said that parts of the paper's account — for example, that her brother was recruited by a Libyan imam while studying in Ottawa — were false since he didn't attend school in Ottawa.

An immigrant of Moroccan origin, Mr. Charkaoui was arrested in Montreal in May, 2003, less than a week after the Casablanca attacks. Federal authorities want to expel him from Canada under a certificate declaring him a threat to national security.

In its briefs filed in Federal Court, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says that Mr. Charkaoui was identified as someone who attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. CSIS said its sources were two terrorists now in U.S. custody, former Montrealer and convicted bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam, and Abu Zubaydah, a former adviser to Osama bin Laden.

Supporters of Mr. Charkaoui are angry that federal officials delayed until this month the release of an August 21, 2003, assessment report that said he could be tortured if deported to his native Morocco.

The latest allegations about him came out the same day that provincial officials in Quebec City said that, while checking allegations of medical-card fraud among wealthy Moroccan-born immigrants, it had found information that led them to refer some cases to federal authorities for "national-security reasons."

The investigation found that health cards might have been used to help applicants obtain Canadian passports illegally.

Lawyer Gaétan Corneau, who headed the investigation, said that all information relating to a potential national security breach was handed over to the RCMP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa.

Mr. Corneau refused to say what information was given to the RCMP. He said that it involved two specific cases and that it was not up to the Quebec Health Insurance Board to investigate national security matters involving immigrants.

At the same time, the president of the Quebec Health Insurance Board, Pierre Roy, said the investigation found no evidence of an organized network set up to use false information to obtain health cards.