Heed torture risk, Canada told

Refugee case judge assails government for ignoring rights warnings about Egypt

COLIN FREEZE - Globe and Mail, December 16, 2006.

TORONTO -- Canadian officials turned a blind eye to torture as they tried to deport a terrorism suspect to Egypt, a Federal Court judge ruled yesterday.

Madam Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer said officials in countries such as Egypt can't be trusted when they promise Western countries they won't mistreat deportees.

Canadian officials would be better served, the judge suggested, by giving more weight to the findings of groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch when they document evidence of torture.

The ruling was released in the case of Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub, an Egyptian national the Canadian government has been trying to deport for more than six years.

He admits he once ran a large farming operation for Osama bin Laden in Africa, but he denies being a terrorist.

Mr. Mahjoub is one of five refugee claimants whom the Canadian government has declared to be a possible al-Qaeda-style threat to national security. Under Ottawa's controversial security-certificate procedure, most are jailed pending deportation. But officials have not been able to deport them so far, amid claims their human rights will be violated if sent back to their homelands.
An unnamed Immigration Canada official tried to smooth Mr. Mahjoub's deportation by submitting a written opinion that said groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch overstate Egypt's use of torture. Egyptian authorities, the official suggested, can be taken at their word when they say they won't mistreat alleged terrorists.

Judge Tremblay-Lamer disagreed. She agrees that the delegate of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration "relied on information that went against the bulk of the evidence in concluding there was no institutionalized torture in Egypt."
She added that "the delegate determined that the human-rights documentation from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch was unreliable and not credible and therefore gave it little or no weight."

Judge Tremblay-Lamer thinks better of these groups and has sent the case back to the Immigration Department, instructing officials to give more consideration to the possibility of torture.

The decision, while incremental, builds on increasingly stark language condemning Canada's dealings with states that use torture.
The constitutionality of the security-certificate procedure is being challenged in Federal Court. An alleged Russian spy was recently arrested under the same law, but he is no longer fighting deportation. It is anticipated he will soon be on a plane back to Moscow.