by Laura Czekaj, Sun Media Source: The Ottawa Sun URL: [link] Date: June 21, 2008 Legal aid pay inadequate for case, say advisers

Ottawa terror suspect Mohamed Harkat has chosen a new team of lawyers. But whether or not Ottawa defence lawyers Matthew Webber and Norman Boxall will represent Harkat will be contingent on the outcome of a funding application going before the Federal Court on July 2 and 3, which attempts to have the federal government assume responsibility for paying their wages. Currently, the defence lawyers representing the Alergian national would be paid through the Ontario legal aid plan at a maximum rate of $92 an hour. Those who have been appointed to special advocate status receive about $275 an hour from the federal government.

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by Thomas Walkom
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link]
Date: June 24, 2008


Ottawa computer software developer Momin Khawaja is not the first to face trial under Canada's anti-terror legislation. That dubious honour belongs to a youth who cannot be named, currently on trial in Brampton for his part in the so-called Toronto 18 plot.

A verdict in the Brampton trial could come as early as next month. The Khawaja case, which has already absorbed four years of court time in pre-trial motions and which began in earnest yesterday, is not expected to end quite so soon.

But for a government desperate to show that Canada's post-9/11 laws work, Khawaja may well be more important.

There are key similarities between the Khawaja case and that of the Toronto 18. Both involve alleged attempts to blow up buildings and create mayhem in support of Islamist causes. Both involve otherwise unremarkable young Canadians.

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by Isabel Teotonio Source: The Toronto Star URL: [link] Date: June 19, 2008
Police mole accused of lying about so-called terrorist training camp

PHOTO: After testifying on June 18, 2008, Mubin Shaikh gestures as he leaves the Brampton courthouse where he is the Crown's star witness in the trial of a youth accused of belonging to an alleged terror cell dubbed the Toronto 18. In a stunning turn of events, a Crown prosecutor yesterday accused his star witness in the Toronto 18 terror case of fabricating some of the evidence about a so-called terrorist training camp. Police mole Mubin Shaikh was caught off guard by prosecutor John Neander's suggestion that he had lied when he said the youth on trial did not know the true purpose of the camp. Although Shaikh agreed that he considered himself "a protector of the vulnerable" – a reference to the youths who attended the December 2005 camp – he rejected any notion that he had been untruthful on the witness stand.

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Our friend Darren Ell has provided us with five new, quality images of The Harkats HERE. They are the first five images in the top row.

Sophie Harkat. Click to enlarge. Check out our entire Photo Gallery HERE.

Thanks to all who have provided us with these pics over the years.

by Helen Kinsella
Source: The Globe and Mail
URL: N/A
Date: June 12, 2008


LONDON -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown escaped defeat by a hair's breadth in a packed House of Commons yesterday over controversial plans to allow police to detain suspected terrorists for as long as 42 days without charge.

Backing for the Counter-Terrorism Bill, which the government had said was necessary to deal with the increasing complexity and ruthlessness of terrorist plots, will come as some measure of relief to the embattled leader, who has suffered a series of blows in recent months.

Mr. Brown's authority, however, remains in question after he was forced to go into persuasion overdrive and ultimately rely on the support of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to ensure victory, with the final count at 315 to 306.

With several Labour backbenchers threatening to defy the government over what they saw as an infringement of civil liberties, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had announced a number of amendments in the lead-up to the vote. They included the requirement for an "exceptional and grave" terrorist threat, and parliamentary authorization within seven days of an application.

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by Stewart Bell Source: The National Post URL: [link] Date: June 10, 2008 Solo terrorists pose new threat: report Intelligence cites 'lone wolves' as emerging trend

A newly declassified Canadian intelligence report is warning about the emerging threat posed by "lone-wolf " Islamist terrorists who operate completely on their own. Terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda have, in the past, tended to work in cells, but the report says they are beginning to use the solo strategy once associated with the militant far right. "Lone wolves motivated by Islamist extremism are a recent development," it says. "Islamist terrorist strategists are now advocating that Muslims take action at a grassroots level, without waiting for instructions."

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by Heba Aly Source: The Toronto Star URL: [link] Date: June 9, 2008 While inquiry meets in private, tortured trio bring tales of terror to small-town Ontario

PHOTO: From left to right, Muayyed Nureddin, Abdullah Almalki and Ahmad El Maati hold a news conference on the steps of the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa, May 8, 2008. It is a bizarre feeling – eating, walking, laughing with men who have been hung from their wrists and beaten with electric cables. To see them behave so normally despite their experiences is a bit destabilizing. But for five days, that is what I did, as three men – Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati – travelled from small town to small town, telling Canadians their stories and pushing for a public inquiry into what happened to them. All three men – Canadian citizens, but also Arab and Muslim – were detained and tortured in a Syrian prison on unproven suspicions of terrorism. They accuse the Canadian government of complicity in their torture. None has ever been charged with a crime.

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by Nick Spicer and Jeremy Copeland Source: AlJazeera English URL: [link] Date: May 30, 2008


News report by Nick Spicer for ALJazeera

by Cristin Schmitz Source: The Lawyers Weekly, Vol. 27, No. 48 URL: N/A Date: April 25, 2008 Several special advocates have publicly complained that rates were lowered

The Federal Court's pending judicial review of five security certificates could be set back by the federal government's delay in announcing the final roster of special advocates, and by unresolved questions surrounding the fees to be paid to the special advocates (SAs), and to the other lawyers who are privately retained by the five men. Federal Court Chief Justice Allan Lutfy and Justice Simon Noel, the joint case-managers of the cases that will pioneer the use of security-cleared special advocates (SAs) in Canada, made it clear at an April 15 case management conference here that they want to see the five cases move forward efficiently and expeditiously in separate, but parallel hearings, that involve the same procedures and consistent determinations of any novel procedural issues that are common to the cases.

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Source: Arab American News URL: [link] Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 18:56:43 -0400 Mohamed Harakat [sic] and his wife Sophie are stuck. Harakat, an Algerian, is one of the five men against whom Canada has issued security certificates. Never charged or convicted of any crime, he is out of prison on strict bail conditions. Now, the Harakats are living in conditions that are untenable, and the judge refuses to allow them to move to the new home that they have located. They have been living in the basement of a house occupied by Sophie's mother and her boyfriend, and the bail conditions included the requirement that Sophie, her mother, or her mother's partner be with Mohamed at all times. Then the mother's romantic relationship fell apart, and she moved out. Now, relations between the Harakats (especially Sophie) and the former boyfriend in whose house they continue to live are growing ever more tense. The boyfriend, Alois Weidemann, had agreed to house them for up to six weeks after Judge Eleanor Dawson permitted his bail to continue after Sophie's mother left. Now, about three months later, tensions between Sophie and Weidemann appear close to the breaking point. Bitterness between the former lovers causes hostility when the mother visits the Harakats.

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