Lawmakers amended Canada's anti-terror law on Monday, one year after its top court quashed the original that allowed Ottawa to detain foreigners suspected of terror ties without charges for many years.
The new measures contained in its immigration and refugee protection act would still permit secret court hearings and indefinite incarceration.
But a special advocate would be assigned in each case to challenge Ottawa's refusal to disclose secret evidence for reasons of national security or public safety, and to question the relevance and sufficiency of the information.
Critics say the slightly modified law will still not pass constitutional muster.
Opposition members of parliament who backed Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government to pass it before the old act expires on Feb. 23 said it was the best they could hope for in such a time frame.
Five men accused of terrorist links since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US are currently in jail or living under strict bail conditions, facing deportation from Canada under the security regime.
Lawyers for three of the men suspected of being al-Qaeda sleeper agents asked Canada's top court in June 2006 to review the use of so-called security certificates. They were backed by 11 civil rights groups.
Canadian lawmakers said the extraordinary measures were absolutely necessary to thwart possible terrorist attacks, but critics argued they breached civil liberties.
The nine justices of the Supreme Court sided with the appellants, but allowed parliament one year to amend the law, as requested by government attorneys.
Parliamentarians on Monday voted 191 to 54 in favor of the amendment.
Meanwhile, a military judge on Monday was examining the legality of a case brought against a young Canadian held in Guantanamo Bay after being arrested at age 15 in Afghanistan, military sources said.
Omar Khadr was seized in Afghanistan in 2002 and taken to the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of the drive to round up extremists in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Now in his early 20s, he is accused of killing a US soldier with a hand grenade as he was being arrested for making explosives.
It was not known when the judge would make his ruling, but defense lawyers argue the special military courts set up in Guantanamo have no authority to try minors.
They maintain that if Khadr's case goes to trial it will be the first time in Western history that a person will have been tried for war crimes committed while still a child.
"In the six years since the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, the Bush administration has failed to bring a single military commissions case to trial because it insists on using a system with fatal due process flaws," said Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the powerful American Civil Liberties Union.
"That one of the first tests of this illegitimate system is the prosecution for war crimes of someone captured as a child shows just how much of a moral and legal failure Guantanamo is," Shamsi said.
Canadian parliamentarians and law experts, as well as human rights groups, have all supported Khadr's lawyers.
"UNICEF is concerned that such a prosecution, in particular in front of a military commission not equipped to meet the required standards, would set a dangerous precedent for the protection of hundreds of thousands of children who find themselves unwittingly involved in conflict around the world," the UN children's fund said in a statement.
So far, only four out of the 275 prisoners held in the remote military base have been brought to trial -- two of them were minors at the time of the alleged events.
Another court hearing is also planned for the end of the week when Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, who worked as a driver and bodyguard for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is due to appear.
His appeal to the US Supreme Court resulted in the first military courts in Guantanamo being ruled as invalid in June 2006.
A new hearing is not planned for June, but his lawyers have continued to argue that new tribunals hastily set up by the US Congress in late 2006 still have no authority.
They also argue that Hamdan has been too traumatized by his years in Guantanamo to be tried.
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