Mahjoub Hearing, Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Hello:

Mary Foster wrote on Monday June 20: ‘was anyone able to go today? how did it go? Very important witnesses from CSIS and CBSA will be on the stand to testify about their complicity in re-isssuing a security certificate that is mostly (entirely?) based on information derived from torture.’

I was unable to go Monday and don’t know if anyone else went, but I did attend today - Tuesday for a few hours. Mary is correct. There are some supposedly high ranking witnesses being heard this week and next week. Yesterday – Monday, the witness was the present Director of CSIS, Richard Fadden. All that I heard about him was that he was ‘all over the place’ perhaps meaning evasive, but I wasn’t there to hear him. If any of you were, I would appreciate a brief report.

I actually attended two court hearings today; the first was at Old City Hall Court for the sentencing hearing of Jaggi Singh of Montreal who was charged with encouraging people to take down the fence at last June’s G20 event. The judge read his various options and mentioned about 200 or so letters that people had written to the court in support of Jaggi. The courtroom was packed. The crown was asking for a six month sentence, but perhaps due to public interest, Jaggi was placed on probation for one year with conditions, but was given ‘time served’ and no further jail time. His supporters were very pleased and Jaggi spoke at an impromptu press conference outside the court house. He spoke not only about himself but about the rights of communities to decide what their streets will be like – not governments and not the courts.

This kind of interest may be a lesson to those of us trying to support Mr. Mahjoub.

At about 11:30 am I walked over to Federal Court and stayed until 3 pm (with a one hour lunch break). One other supporter came for about ¾ hour. I saw and heard Public Counsel Paul Slansky cross-examine Mr. Flanagan, a retired manager for CSIS. The questioning had to do with an agreement in 2006 between CSIS and CBSA to have a CSIS Collector Agent (CA), I think, work in what was referred to as a ‘bubble’ because this agent had the task of intercepting (listening in) phone messages of Mr. Mahjoub and Mr. Jaballah, both of Toronto. These messages were supposed to be copied to a CD and passed on to CBSA. The problem that is being probed by the cross-examination is – what did they do with calls that were between Mr. Mahjoub and his lawyers. A CSIS agent in a previous hearing admitted that CSIS did indeed record solicitor-client conversations. Public Counsel asked questions of witness Mr. Flanagan who was apparently responsible for CSIS policy in this matter. However Mr. Flanagan was not very cooperative, launching into long vague, contradictory answers that finally caused Mr. Slansky to lose his patience and ask the witness to just answer the questions with a short answer or a yes or no. At least a couple of questions were objected to on the basis of answers being ‘secret evidence’ and therefore of national security importance. One of these questions simply asked for a point of policy that should be public. At one point Public Counsel pointed out to the witness that he had contradicted an earlier answer and asked for and had the court reporter read back the previous question and answer which was indeed a contradiction. Some of the vagueness was the witness’s inability to say conclusively if the CA was indeed operating in a bubble (strictly as an agent for CBSA and not for CSIS). One word that the witness decided had more than one meaning was ‘relevancy’. Relevancy at first was supposed to mean – any intercepts that would indicate a threat to Canadian security – these would have to be reported to CSIS. However, the witness then added the meaning – ‘intelligence value’, meaning that an intercept, even one between a client and his lawyer – would have relevancy if it had intelligence value. At the point just before Judge Blanchard called the lunch break, the witness was so confused that he said he could no longer answer Public Counsel’s questions. The hearing did of course continue in the afternoon.

What I think is being revealed by the very strong probing of Mr. Slansky is that CSIS policies on intercepting solicitor-client conversations are and have been woefully wanting. We are hoping that the judge sees this as well.

I will be away for most of the next three weeks – accompanying my brother to a family wedding in B.C. and then some other responsibilities and family events. Mr. Mahjoub thought these hearings will end by mid-July.

Court will go on tomorrow – Wednesday, June 22, 9:30 am but not Thursday or Friday so if anyone can attend tomorrow – Wednesday that would be good.

For the week of June 27, hearings are scheduled for Monday June 27 through Thursday June 30, with hearings beginning at 9:30 am.

Please attend even if for a short time. It looks so much better if interest is shown – as it was in the Jaggi Singh case.

Hearings are at Federal Court, 180 Queen St. W., 6^th floor, near Osgoode station on the University line.