A top story 2009: Charkaoui freed after long ordeal and help from determined supporters
By SUE MONTGOMERY, The Gazette
On a recent evening, dozens of people of various ages, backgrounds and walks of life – from lawyers to politicians to activists – sat side by side at long tables in a basement community centre on Beaudry St., enjoying platters of chicken, couscous and roasted vegetables.
The celebration was for one person: Adil Charkaoui, a man whose life the Canadian government turned into an Orwellian nightmare when it falsely accused him of being a terrorist.
After 61/2 years, Charkaoui was finally cleared in September, when the Federal Court quashed the security certificate bearing the 36-year-old’s name, and many, including his lawyer, believe it wouldn’t have happened if a small but tireless army of people hadn’t supported him and brought his plight to public attention.
Charkaoui, whose wife recently gave birth to the couple’s fourth child, is grateful for and somewhat awestruck by the madame-et-monsieur-tout-le-mondes who firmly believed that the security certificates – a tool under immigration law that allows the government to arrest non-citizens without charge and detain them indefinitely without ever being able to see the evidence against them – have no place in a democracy like Canada.
“In the Koran, it says that even if you pay all the money in the world, you can’t buy a heart,” Charkaoui said in a telephone interview while driving back from his job as a French teacher in a Catholic high school in St. Jean sur Richelieu. “If I paid all the money in the world, I couldn’t have bought such a committed and sincere group of people.
“Canada should be proud to have such people – they are really few and far between.”
Some people came to Charkaoui’s defence later in his long fight to clear his name. Others, like 76-year-old Martin Duckworth, who did not know Charkaoui from Adam when he first met him in the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre soon after his arrest in May 2003, has stuck by him since the get-go.
“I always felt he was an innocent man, from the time I met him,” said filmmaker Duckworth, who credits his mother, one of the original members of the Voice of Women peace movement, for instilling in him a strong sense of social justice. Muriel Duckworth, who was outraged by the certificates, died in August at 100, missing the jubilation when Charkaoui was cleared completely.
“He was a man of integrity, very accomplished and very articulate,” Martin Duckworth said. “He set the example for us and never lost confidence.”
Duckworth was part of the core group of people who sat through interminable court hearings – including two trips to the Supreme Court – that would bore even the most enthusiastic legal beagle, stood holding placards in sub-zero temperatures, wrote letters, maintained a website and generally boosted Charkaoui’s morale when he needed it most. They scraped together $50,000 in bail, $25,000 of it in cash, for a man they barely knew – because they believed in the fundamental right of a fair trial.
“We don’t want to live in a society where we’re constantly afraid of each other,” said Mary Foster, a translator who attended the first rally in support of Charkaoui organized by his sister Hind a couple of days after his arrest. She soon became the face of the Justice for Adil movement, which also supported the four other Muslim men under certificates in Ontario.
One of those, Hassan Almrei, also saw his name cleared this month.
Justice Richard Mosley ruled that the government’s evidence against him was largely made up, and based on questionable newspaper clippings, sloppy history and unreliable evidence from informants who “had motive to concoct stories that cast Almrei in a negative light.”
It’s what people like Foster, Duckworth and all the others working in the shadows have been saying for years.
“The government simply bringing forward a set of allegations which they consistently refused to substantiate in any way should not allow us to lose sight of presumption of innocence,” Foster said.
“Otherwise we get into a fascist situation.
“Sure, there are always moments where you realize you’re up against a very strong set of interests that are much better resourced than you are, but at the same time there’s no point in not doing something. Giving up is just not an option.”
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
PHOTOS, STORIES ONLINE
Stay up to date on all 10 instalments of Rewind, our look back at the year and decade, at montrealgazette.com/rewind
