Ottawa reveals files on 5 terrorists

Ottawa releases five files on al-Qaida linked terrorists, the same day Canada passes a new law to deport terrorists.

Federal officials opened up their secret files on five suspected members of the Osama bin Laden network Friday, disclosing previously classified details of their alleged terrorist activities in Canada.

Hundreds of pages of documents filed in Federal Court in Ottawa lay out for the first time the evidence that has led the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to conclude the men are foreign terrorists.

The court filings also reveal the array of intelligence-gathering tactics used against the suspects, from telephone wiretaps to clandestine searches, suggesting a new willingness on the part of CSIS to go public with its secrets after years of fighting to protect them.

....

*Moroccan terror suspect Adil Charkaoui was overheard discussing his 1998 sojourn in a training camp in Afghanistan. "After three weeks in the camp, a mujahedin [Islamic holy warrior] gave Charkaoui responsibility over a group of fighters with all the responsibility that involved [money, food, weapons] in order to evaluate his leadership," the allegations read.

*After coming to Canada in 1996, Mahmoud Jaballah, an Egyptian and the founder of a Toronto Islamic school, was in regular contact with al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al Zawahiri. He would call Zawahiri on the latter's Inmarsat satellite phone.

*Within months of arriving in Canada in 1999, alleged Afghanistan-trained documents forger Hassan Almrei gained access to a restricted area of Toronto's Pearson airport. He appeared to have access cards and codes for restricted access to the building.

*Ottawa resident Mohamed Harkat was a member of Al Gamaa al Islamiya, the Egyptian terrorist group headed by the "blind sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, and responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. In 1998, he was heard saying that he had received his Canadian immigration status and would soon be ready to take part in jihad.

[...]

But the most extensive new information concerns Mr. Charkaoui, a Montreal resident who has denied any involvement in terrorism. The CSIS summary says he was heard discussing his trip to a training camp in Afghanistan. Witnesses have also said they saw him there.

The document does not identify the source of this information but acknowledges that CSIS drew on wiretaps and informants to mount its case. Mr. Charkaoui has insisted he was in Pakistan for religious instruction at the time and never entered Afghanistan.

In what appear to be accounts of wiretapped conversations or informant reports, the CSIS document makes the following allegations about Mr. Charkaoui:

*In April, 1999, he and others watched a videotaped debate about jihad, in which one speaker said that Islam's objective was to "rid itself of the scourge of Western corruption, that everyone who opposed this doctrine should be killed, and that with the jihad, Islamists would rule the world." Mr. Charkaoui expressed his support for this view, the document says.

*In October, 1999, Mr. Charkaoui talked about the mujahedin in Bosnia and Chechnya and talked of recruiting "brothers" for the jihad. In the same conversation, he praised the principles of the late Abdellah Azzam, the godfather of the modern jihadi movement.

*In November, 2001, he said the war in Afghanistan was a war against Islam led by "the impious and Christians."

*In March, 2002, he described how he was transformed from being non-religious to a fervent believer after reading about the treatment of Muslims during the Crusades.

Read the whole thing