by Tonda MacCharles
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link]
Date: December 10, 2010


[Photo: Mohamed Harkat, right, wells up with tears as his wife Sophie Harkat looks on during a press conference in Ottawa on Friday Dec. 10, 2010. Harkat said he will appeal a Federal Court ruling Thursday that he remains a threat to national security.]

OTTAWA—A combative Sophie Harkat lashed out at a federal court judge for relying on secret evidence from an unnamed informant whom she said was a witness at her and Mohamed Harkat’s wedding.

Thursday’s ruling, which upheld CSIS’ claims that Mohamed Harkat is a terrorist supporter who should be deported, was like a “punch in the guts,” Sophie Harkat said.

“My husband said to me, ‘I am dying inside,’” she said while sobbing at a news conference. She said the two were “devastated” upon learning the judge had ruled against him on the basis of evidence that was never revealed to him or his lawyer, but seen only by government-appointed “special advocates.”

In broken English, Harkat said “I swear on my life” that he is innocent of all allegations against him. He said he was “never” involved in terrorism in the past or in the future. “I never be a part of bin Laden network in my life.” He said he fears prison, torture or death if returned to Algeria.

Harkat said he never denied using a fraudulent Saudi passport to enter Canada. His wife said the government acknowledged in court that 80 per cent of refugee claimants use false documents to enter.

He also said he never intended to end up here upon leaving Algeria, but his attempts to build a life in Pakistan faltered when “the situation got worse” there in the mid-90s.The couple and their supporters on Friday vowed to fight the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

First they must return to the same federal court judge, Simon Noel, who found Harkat’s testimony “not truthful, honest or transparent,” in order to certify which constitutional questions they will be permitted to raise at the Federal Court of Appeal.

Noel’s ruling said the federal government’s issuance of a security certificate, an extraordinary immigration warrant needed to deport the Algerian-born man, is a “reasonable” move based on the secret evidence the judge saw.

Noel also said there was enough on the public record for Harkat to know the case he had to meet, and he failed to do so.

Sophie Harkat said the decision was “politically motivated.” Lawyer Norm Boxall said all the evidence Noel relied on was heard behind closed doors. Furthermore, Boxall said, even though special advocates were allowed to see the evidence, they are not, by law, permitted to reveal it to Harkat so he couldn’t contest anything.

Sophie Harkat was scathing in rejecting the judge’s conclusion theirs was a marriage of convenience.

“My husband and I married (in January 2001) for all the right reasons, I don’t care what the court document says, I don’t care what you think,” she said.

“When my husband asked me to marry him, he said I don’t have a citizenship, maybe we should wait. I said ‘Why? It won’t change anything between you and I.’ Just for the record, I love my husband more today than I ever did. And you can tell that to the Canadian population . . . I’m going to stick by his side until we see victory.”

Sophie Harkat she was “100 per cent positive” the informant used to be a friend of her husband’s and a witness at their wedding.

“He was very curious the first two years that we were married. He would call on numerous occasions to ask me how I’m doing and on one occasion he said something very suspicious and that’s when I started to think something was going on with him.”

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