National Security Certificate: Mohamed Harkat of Ottawa

Mohamed Harkat of Ottawa: As a Supreme Court hearing on the controversial certificate system began Thursday, federal counsel Urszula Kaczmarczyk said the 2007 reworking allowed Mohamed Harkat of Ottawa, accused of terrorist ties, to know the case against him, according to CTV. The person named in a security certificate -- a means of deporting non-citizens suspected of being terrorists or spies -- receives only a summary of the case against them, stripped of supporting details to protect sensitive intelligence sources and methods and OTTAWA -- The Conservative government "carefully crafted" changes to the national security certificate system that brought the rarely used tool for dealing with threats to Canada in line with the Constitution, says a federal lawyer. The high court agreed last year to hear a challenge of the system from Harkat, an Algerian refugee who was taken into custody under a certificate in December 2002 on suspicion of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent. A revised certificate was issued in his case in 2008 after the secretive process was revamped to make it more fair. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.