A suspected Syrian terrorist who has spent seven years in mostly segregated custody in Canada is claiming that his indefinite detention without charge or trial amounts to cruelty, his lawyer said on Sunday.
In a challenge filed in Federal Court on Friday, Hassan Almrei argues that his lengthy incarceration violates his constitutional rights, Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman told the Canadian Press.
“It’s seven years and we’re saying it’s unconstitutional,” Waldman said, speaking from Argentina. “It’s cruel and inhumane treatment.”
Almrei, who has traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US. He is one of five Muslim foreigners held under a national security certificate — which allows the Canadian government to detain them indefinitely as a threat to public safety based on secret evidence.
The other four have been granted bail under stringent conditions while their lawyers fight Ottawa’s contention they have terrorist ties. The men, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohammad Mahjoub, Mohamed Harkat and Adil Charkaoui, deny terrorist links and have fought deportation, saying they will be tortured if returned to their home countries, which include Egypt and Algeria.
Almrei, 34, was linked to former Toronto resident Nabil al-Marabh, for whom he got a fake Canadian passport. Initially touted by US security officials as a Canadian connection to the Sept. 11 attacks, Al-Marabh was convicted in the US in 2002 of a routine immigration violation and deported to Syria in 2004.
Secret court hearings on whether Canada’s national security certificates are “reasonable” are scheduled to resume in the fall amid ongoing legal clashes about the fairness of the entire process.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of