Hi all:
I attended today’s hearing starting at about noon. Jean Smith also came in the afternoon.
The hearing continued from yesterday with the testimony of U.S. lawyer Joshua Dratel, expert in ‘U.S. national security and terrorism’. From questions by Public Counsel Yavar Hameed, he continued to speak about the ‘U.S. Embassy Bombings’ in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 by Al Qaeda operatives and the trial that ensued in which he defended one of the accused. A lot of Mr. Dratel’s testimony told about one star witness in particular, a former Al Qaeda operative and businessman in Sudan who fled his bank debts and Al Qaeda and ‘sold himself’ to the U.S. government, agreeing to cooperate in return for $ million, and witness protection for his extended family of 12 in the U.S and a variety of other perks. Mr. Dratel pointed out that this witness’s first testimony to U.S. marshalls was videotaped without the knowledge of the prosecutors and when this video evidence was revealed it was noticed that his story had changed many times – with him creating a more important picture of himself when testifying in court. In short he was ‘selling himself’ to his captors but this to Mr. Dratel made him a completely unreliable witness. Mr. Dratel has asked and is still waiting for a retrial for his client who was convicted based largely on the testimony of this witness.
There are many other details of this person and others as well that I won’t go into here. A general conclusion that one can draw is that the reliabiltity of any witnesses used by the U.S. to put people behind bars is called into question when the witnesses they used were trying to save their own skins and were busy ‘selling themselves’.
A more specific set of conclusions was given in Mr. Dratel’s affidavit part of which he read out in court, to the effect that there is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Mahjoub ever had any connections to any terrorist acts or training while he was working at Damasine (sp) Farm in Sudan in the mid - 90’s. In fact the clincher for me was Mr. Dratel’s statement that, “he had never heard of Mr. Mahjoub prior to preparing for this hearing.” He also pointed out that his knowledge of events of the Embassy bombings is always at the forefront of his mind because he is often interviewed by media about the Embassy bombings – and he has never seen or heard Mr. Mahjoub’s name. It was stated during this hearing that there were 277 co-accused connected to the Embassy bombings and Mr. Mahjoub’s name is not one of them.
The Ministers’ Counsel tried to cast doubt on Mr. Dratel’s testimony because so far he has been unsuccessful in obtaining the retrial of his client even though it is known that the main witness was unreliable, but I think Mr. Dratel acquitted himself well.
There may be some gaps in this report but I hope it gives you some sense of today’s testimony.
The ‘Reasonableness of the Security Certificate’ hearings were recessed at the end of this afternoon and will not resume until Monday, January 10, 2011.
However, a ‘Solicitor-Client Privilege Motion’ will be heard this Friday, December 17 starting at 9:30 am, due to the revelation by a CSIS witness at these hearings that CSIS has been listening to phone conversations between Mr. Mahjoub and his lawyers, since the year 2000. This hearing will be presided over by a Judge Alto.
I am unable to attend due to my son having his second surgery in a week at Hamilton General Hospital on Friday. If anyone can attend and email me a report I will post it on this blog.
Thanks for your support and see you in court in January.
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