The strange case of Mohammed Harkat, a pizza deliveryman who has been labeled a national security threat by the federal government, plays out in the wood-paneled grandeur of the east courtroom of the Supreme Court of Canada building.
Mr. Harkat, 42, a short man with close-cropped dark hair, enters the courtroom each morning almost unnoticed.
He walks with a slight limp, the result of a childhood accident. He sits quietly in the first row of the spectators’ section as up to eight different lawyers, a string of witnesses who have never met him, and others talk about him.
The four government lawyers sit at tables cluttered with stacks of transcripts, exhibit books and other documents. Thirteen cardboard boxes the size of orange crates were used to haul the government’s Harkat files into the room. And these are only the declassified records. The government says it has other, secret records it cannot bring into a public courtroom because of a risk to national security.
Mr. Harkat’s four lawyers don’t have nearly as much paperwork on their tables. Only one of them is privy to the secret files and he’s been sworn to secrecy, unable to tell Mr. Harkat anything.
Mr. Harkat’s safety may be at stake in these proceedings. He has said that if he is deported to Algeria, his native country, he risks torture, or worse, especially after Canada has hung the terrorist label on him.
The government’s star witness is an intelligence officer identified only as John. He says he doesn’t know any of the secret information that was used to tag Mr. Harkat for deportation.
John says he was chosen to testify because his employer, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, considers him one of its experts on “Sunni Islamic terrorism.”
But another important consideration, John admits, is that he doesn’t really know much about the Harkat case except what he’s read from the public record. Thus he is not in a position to let slip any of the secret intelligence about Mr. Harkat or how it was collected.
“It is necessary that we not reveal confidential classified material inadvertently,” John testified on the first of five days in the witness box.
How dangerous can Mr. Harkat be to national security if John, a 19-year veteran of the service, an officer who’s spent most of his career on Islamic terrorism cases, hasn’t read at least part of the secret Harkat dossier somewhere along the line?
Can Mr. Harkat really be such a big catch, a “sleeper agent,” as the government claims, if one of its senior counter-terrorism officers knows only what he’s read in the papers and other open sources?
John’s professional reading habits are interesting. Referring to Islamic terrorism, he says “I have read excerpts over the years from many different books. I have read a few books fully, but not very many.”
Despite his ignorance of the secret stuff in the Harkat case, John said he knows enough to draw conclusions about Mr. Harkat and why he was detained for deportation in 2002.
“Ultimately, Mr. Harkat is part of the support network that permits groups associated with the bin Laden network to operate,” John said.
Look carefully at the number of slippery words in that statement. John does not actually say Mr. Harkat has ever carried out a violent act of terrorism. He could be charged with a crime if that were the case.
Nor does John say Mr. Harkat was caught planning to commit terrorism. That’s also a felony.
No, all that’s claimed is that the pizza deliveryman is part of a support network that permits other groups associated with the bin Laden network to operate. Mr. Harkat is claimed to be at least two groups removed from Osama bin Laden.
John also testified Mr. Harkat operated a guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan for terrorists in training. John said there is “information to suggest that the guest house may be linked” to a terrorist organization that sent recruits for training across the border into Afghanistan.
A large part of the government’s public case against Mr. Harkat is this kind of guilt by loose association. (Those of you on Facebook, beware. You might be part of a network that is associated with another group that permits evil people to do violent things. But you knew that, didn’t you? And those of you who run B&Bs, well, we all know what you’re really up to.)
Norman Boxall and Matthew Webber, two of Mr. Harkat’s lawyers, are working in the dark as they try to poke holes in the government’s case. They’re like kids at a Mexican birthday party, blindfolded while trying to break open the piñata to get at the candy inside.
There is another advocate for Mr. Harkat, lawyer Paul Copeland, who has seen inside the piñata. But Mr. Copeland cannot say publicly what he has seen. Under a new procedure at the Federal Court, the judge, Justice Simon Noel, has appointed Mr. Copeland as a special advocate, allowed to look the secret dossier. Mr. Copeland is able to participate at the secret portions of these hearings. He’s allowed into the secret courtoom, located somewhere else in Ottawa.
But Mr. Harkat cannot attend. Nor can his other lawyers. And Mr. Copeland can’t tell. He’s sworn to secrecy. Mr. Copeland doesn’t say much during the public hearings, but he takes a lot of notes.
Mr. Harkat’s team of lawyers got a chance to call its own expert witnesses in early February. First up was Thomas Quiggin, a former military intelligence officer and consultant with the Privy Council Office and other agencies. He’s been in the business for more than two decades.
His evidence was sobering for the journalists in the room. He said a lot of what’s known as open source information is from news reports that are poorly sourced. He had several examples.
Many of us have heard or read that Osama bin Laden has lots of personal money to finance terrorism. The figure $300-million is often cited.
Mr. Quiggin tried to track that back to a source. It seems to have been picked up by some journalists in Washington on the basis of an estimate by someone in the State Department using the presumed worth of the bin Laden family construction business in the Middle East.
You get that $300-million if you assume the company is sold and the proceeds are divided equally among the Osama’s 52 siblings and cousins.
None of this has actually happened, but yet the myth persists, Mr. Quiggin said. People in the intelligence business are susceptible to group think and seeing things that aren’t really there, he said.
They also tend to believe information that has a high security classification is more reliable than other types of information. Like all of us, intelligence officers tend to believe the first thing they hear even when later evidence suggests the contrary. “That’s a very human state of affairs.”
And that’s the future Mr. Harkat faces. Even if the courts throw out the deportation case against him, even if a judge clears him of allegations he was ever a security threat and allows him to stay in Canada, there will always be those who remember his name only in the context of national security. He’ll never again be just the pizza delivery guy.
