Original author: Nelson Wyatt
Source: Macleans.ca
URL: [link]
Date: February 22, 2005


MONTREAL (CP) - A suspected terrorist suggested Tuesday he's being set up by Canadian intelligence agents working behind the scenes with Moroccan authorities.

Adil Charkaoui criticized the Canadian Security Intelligence Service after federal government lawyers denied a Radio-Canada report that Moroccan authorities had issued an arrest warrant for the 31-year-old last September."CSIS, when they asked me to work for them and I refused, they promised that they would put me in trouble," Charkaoui said outside his Federal Court hearing.

"There is co-operation under the table between CSIS and the DST," he said, citing the French acronym of Morocco's Directorate of Territorial Security.

"It's a second Maher Arar affair."

When contacted for reaction, a CSIS spokeswoman referred all questions about Charkaoui to the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Department. A spokesman for the department was not immediately available.

Maher Arar was detained by U.S. authorities at New York's JFK airport on Sept. 26, 2002, during a stopover en route home to Canada.

He was held in the U.S. for nearly two weeks and then flown to Syria, via Jordan, despite his request to be returned to Canada. Although he wasn't charged, he said he was tortured and held in Syria for a year.

An inquiry is underway in Ottawa to determine the role Canadian officials played in Arar's deportation.

On Tuesday, federal lawyers told a Federal Court hearing there are no arrest or extradition warrants from Morocco against Charkaoui.

Charkaoui was in Federal Court for a review of the security certificate under which he was detained for 21 months. He was freed on $50,000 bail last week.

Charkaoui has denied any links to terrorists but jailed millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam and imprisoned al-Qaida lieutenant Abou Zubaida identified Charkaoui as the man they met at a training camp in Afghanistan in 1998.

Daniel Roussy, a federal government lawyer, said later the Canadian Border Services Agency confirmed the absence of any outstanding warrants against Charkaoui.

"There is no international arrest warrant," he said.

"There is apparently another Charkaoui but with a different (first) name, a different birthdate, a different photograph. It is not the same person before the court today."

During Tuesday's hearing, a Muslim cleric criticized CSIS, saying some agents engaged in racial profiling and intimidation while conducting investigations in the Arab community.

Charkaoui is under police surveillance until he can be equipped with an electronic monitoring device, a condition of his bail. A device wasn't available when he was released last Friday.

Ironically, as he left home for court Tuesday morning, a TV crew videotaped him being stopped by Montreal police for not having cleaned snow from the rear window of his minivan.

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