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3 Terror Suspects Back on Hunger Strike
Conditions still bad, family says `Security' detainees fear deportation
MICHELLE SHEPHARD
Toronto Star
May 26, 2006
As Ottawa terrorism suspect Mohamed Harkat prepares to leave the detention facility dubbed "Guantanamo Bay North" by his supporters, the three remaining Toronto detainees are staging a hunger strike.
It's not the first time they've refused food to protest their detainment, and unlike the hunger-striking prisoners in the U.S. base camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are now being force fed, the Toronto suspects have always resumed eating on their own in the past.
This time though Syrian Hassan Almrei and Egyptians Mahmoud Jaballah and Mohammad Mahjoub are telling their families and lawyers they've had enough and are prepared to die if their conditions don't improve. Almrei began refusing everything but water and juice two weeks ago, and Jaballah and Mahjour are on their fourth day of a hunger strike.
"They've tried everything one has had to do to resolve the problems but now feel this is all they have left," says Toronto lawyer John Norris.
All three men are accused of having links to terrorist organizations and are detained on national security certificates, an immigration provision that allows the government to deport non-citizens deemed a threat to Canada. They are fighting their deportation saying they will be tortured or killed if sent to their birthplaces.
The federal court has upheld the security certificates in the cases of Almrei and Mahjoub, who will next month mark his sixth year in custody.
Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of this immigration law that permits hearing evidence in private and could lead to the men being deported to countries where they will face torture.
Jaballah, who is accused of having ties to the Egyptian Al Jihad, and who Canada's spy service alleges "personally played an important role," in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is currently facing another hearing to test the "reasonableness" of the certificate.
A federal court justice this week ordered Harkat released from detention on strict conditions that include wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet and having all his communications monitored. Justice Eleanor Dawson ruled that while she believed Harkat remained a threat, the conditions imposed could mitigate that danger.
Harkat, an Algerian refugee, had been incarcerated since December 2002.
Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson Cara Prest said she was not able to comment on the hunger-striking detainees specifically, but that a policy set out by the Correctional Service of Canada is followed when inmates refuse food.
That policy states force-feeding will not take place if the inmate has the "capacity to understand the consequences of fasting at the time he or she made the decision to fast," making it unlikely CBSA would adopt the controversial policy in GuantanamoBay where three prisoners are being force-fed by tubes inserted in their noses.
The Toronto suspects were previously incarcerated at Toronto's West Detention Centre but transferred this April, along with Harkat, to a newly constructed $3.2 million maximum-security facility built on the grounds of Millhaven Penitentiary near Kingston.
The new holding centre was built following numerous complaints and court challenges about the Toronto detention centre, a provincial facility that houses prisoners with sentences under two years and therefore provides few programs for long-term detainees.
But the new holding centre doesn't live up to the promises that government made, the detainees and their families claim.
"When the facility was announced they said they could cook their own food," Norris notes. Microwaves were bought and installed, "but the men don't have any access to any food that they could cook.
"They're cut off from the main facility so can't get to the canteen. All they have access to is a vending machine," Norris said.
Jaballah's 19-year-old son Ahmad conceded the new facility does provide some advantages, such as permitting visits where Plexiglass no longer divide his father from his six children or wife.
But, he adds, restraints on the use of the phone and restricting visiting hours are taking a toll because the family has to commute from Toronto.
"The conditions are worse than Toronto West. They probably spent the $3.2 million on the barbed wire and four fences around it," the university student said yesterday in an interview.
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