The family of Adil Charkaoui and the Coalition for Justice for Adil Charkaoui ask all to come and show your support for a fair and just trial for Mr. Charkaoui (and for the other victims of security certificates). Even an hour of your time would be valuable and very much appreciated.

Next court appearance of Adil Charkaoui takes place:

Monday 12 January from 9:30 to 5:00 (with a break for lunch), at the Federal Court, 30 rue McGill (metro Square Victoria)

The family of Adil Charkaoui and the Coalition for Justice for Adil Charkaoui ask all to come and show your support for a fair and just trial for Mr. Charkaoui (and for the other victims of security certificates). Even an hour of your time would be valuable and very much appreciated.

Background

Adil Charkaoui, a student at the University of Montreal, was arrested in May 2003 under a Security Certificate, a provision of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The Security Certificate denies Refugees and Permanent Residents like Charkaoui certain basic rights in the name of national security. They are detained without specific charges being laid against them. They are not given access to the full evidence that CSIS is using against them. The process includes closed sessions in which the detained and his lawyer cannot participate. The court is not given the mandate to decide whether the allegations are in fact true, but only whether CSIS has reasonable grounds to suspect they are true. If the judge decides, on the basis of information secretly presented by CSIS, that there are "reasonable grounds" to suspect that Charkaoui is a threat to national security, he will be deported to his country of origin, without appeal. In the current climate, being deported on suspicion of having links to organisations identified by the USA as terrorist amounts to a death sentence. In Morocco, Charkaoui is likely to suffer further violations of his human rights, including incarceration, torture and even death.

A press release issued shortly after Charkaoui's detention, by the Ligue des droits et libertés, Amnesty International-Canada, the Association of American Jurists and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), denounces the use of Security Certificates as having "dramatic" consequences for rights and liberties (27 May 2003). (Full release,
www.adilinfo.org.)

Federal Court Justice James K. Hugessen said, "We do not like this process of having to sit alone hearing only one party ... we do not have any knowledge except what is given to us and when it is only given to us by one party we are not well suited to test the materials that are put before us. We greatly miss ... the adversary system ... that ... is for most of us, the real warranty that the outcome of what we do is going to be fair and just..." (Montreal, 2002). (Full quote, www.homesnotbombs.ca.)

More information

Coalition for Justice for Adil Charkaoui
tel 514 859 9023
just...@riseup.net
www.adilinfo.org

The Coalition for Justice for Adil Charkaoui formed in Montreal in a matter of days after his abrupt arrest. The Coalition - an alliance of Muslim groups, refugee and immigrant rights organizations, anti-oppression groups and the Charkaoui family - demands the immediate release of all Security Certificate detainees, no deportations, a fair trial, an immediate end to the "Security Certificate" system, an end to scape-goating in response to American pressure, and an end to the harassment of Muslims and Arabs.