Stop Mohamed Harkat’s deportation to torture

The federal government is pushing to deport Mohamed Harkat to torture. The matter is urgent and imminent.

Harkat, a United Nations Convention refugee who has lived in Canada for 22 years, faces deportation to Algeria under a highly controversial security certificate.

Declared unconstitutional in 2007, then reinstated with a minor alteration, Security Certificates allow for secret hearings where the accused and their lawyers are not allowed to see key allegations and evidence used against them. Security-cleared lawyers are allowed to see some of the secret case, but neither the accused nor their lawyer is allowed to be present.

Harkat was arrested on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2002, and subsequently detained without charge for 3.5 years, often in solitary confinement. He has struggled under a brutal series of house arrest bail conditions and is fighting this latest threat of deportation.

As his spouse Sophie Harkat stated, “I have been married 18 years to this gentle, funny, hard-working man, someone who has never been accused – much less convicted of – committing a crime or act of violence. But in the Canadian racial and religious profiling sweeps that happened after 9/11, Moe was wrongfully targeted… Moe was never charged with anything. Yet he spent over a year in solitary confinement, and after three more years in jail without charge, was transferred to the strictest house arrest in Canadian history.”

Though Harkat was arrested under the security regime of the former Harper government, appeals to the Liberal government to let him stay in Canada have so far gone unheeded – despite their inability to show that he presents any kind of threat.

If sent back to Algeria, Mohamed Harkat faces detention, torture and even death.

This threat of deportation flies in the face of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration last year that “Nobody, ever, deserves to be tortured.” Nobody, ever, deserves to be deported to torture either.

Amnesty International, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and thousands of people and organizations across this country are demanding that the federal government put an end to this nightmare for the Harkat family by lifting the threat of deportation.

Organizers are urging supporters to write to Trudeau and the Ministers of Public Safety, Justice and Immigration to urge them to stop the deportation to torture of Mohamed Harkat and to not make themselves, and Canada, complicit in torture once more.

• To sign the petition https://bit.ly/2QfelLl. To send letters to federal officials http://iclmg.ca/stop-harkat-deportation/