Mahjoub Hearing – Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Hi all:

Today’s hearing at Federal Court, 180 Queen Street, 6^th floor, actually began at 1:30 pm rather than 9:30 am as I had posted in the last blog. Even Mohammad did not know of the change.

Two of M.’s friends were there for the afternoon hearing. It’s purpose was to hear the ‘Disclosure Motion’ debated by the two lawyers Yavar Hameed, Public Counsel and Mr. Tyndale, Ministers’ Counsel, before Mr. Justice Blanchard. The four items under discussion were: 1. Video images captured by the camera outside M.’s apartment door – Public Counsel wants all video footage to be released to M. so he and his lawyers can see how wide ranging and intrusive it may be. It can also be used to settle disputes with CBSA where they have accused M. of violating conditions by his receipt of packages (like a mousetrap in a box) by a delivery person who M. says is actually the superintendent.

2. Public Counsel has asked for the complete CBSA – CIC file in order to see the record of the solicitor-client privilege being violated by CSIS listening in to telephone conversations between M. and his lawyers. Previous testimony by CSIS agents has been that they have a policy for dealing with such surveillance which means they do not use it, However the Public Counsel and M. want to see for themselves.

There were two other items of disclosure asked for by Public Counsel that I did not fully understand. The argument was that having full disclosure of videos for example would make it easier to automatically eliminate the charges brought to court by CBSA of condition violations by M. Just viewing the videos would settle the matter.

Public Counsel asked for these disclosure items and defended these requests to Judge Blanchard. The judge did have some hard questions for Public Counsel that made me feel like the judge was biased in that he seemed to accept the testimony of the CSIS agents that they had a policy for dealing with ‘listening to privileged conversations’ and why didn’t Public Counsel just accept that.

Ministers’ Counsel Mr. Tyndale spent his time belittling the requests for disclosure by Public Counsel. He said that Public Counsel had failed to establish any connection between its disclosure requests and its arguments against non-compliance accusations by CBSA of M.

Judge Blanchard said that he would make a ruling on this matter as soon as possible.

Tomorrow – Wednesday will be dedicated to the ‘Detention Review’ for Mr. Mahjoub. It will begin at 9:30 am and will go all day.

Again, it will be very valuable to Mr. Mahjoub’s cause to have spectators at court tomorrow. Please if you are able, come out for an hour or two.

The location is 180 Queen Street West, near Osgoode Station, 6^th floor.

Murray