Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub came to Canada to flee political persecution and human rights violations in 1995. Having been subject to repeated periods of imprisonment without trial, as well as torture in Egypt, he was eventually accepted as a refugee in 1996. He settled in Toronto, was married, and had two young sons.
Then, in June 2000, Mahjoub was arrested on a security certificate. Once upheld by the court under a secret trial process, security certificates become a deportation order. Mahjoub, as an accepted refugee, has reasonable grounds to fear torture if deported to Egypt.
In 2005, Mahjoub began a hunger strike, consuming water, juice and occasional broth, lasting 76 days and losing 110lb before he was hospitalised. In April 2006, Mahjoub, along with three other security certificate detainees, was transferred to the newly opened "Kingston Immigration Holding Centre", which was soon dubbed "Guantanamo North". The six-cell facility was opened specifically to detain security certificate detainees. Mahjoub, with two of the other detainees at Guatanamo North, went on hungerstrike in winter of 2006. He ended the 93-day hunger strike just before a February 15th 2007 Federal Court ruling ordering Mahjoub to be released. Some months after the ruling to release him, he was finally transferred from Guantanamo North to his home in Toronto. The conditions of his release were extremely severe, and in practice turned his home into a prison and his family into his prison guards.
On 18 March 2009, Mahjoub returned to prison at Guantanamo North in Kingston. He could no longer subject his family to the intolerable and humiliating invasions of their privacy that the conditions of his house arrest required. After a protracted hungerstrike in 2009, Mohammad Mahjoub, then the sole prisoner at âGuantanamo Northâ, was released under house arrest in Toronto.
In summer 2010, in a significant court victory, the Federal Court ruled that part of the "case" against Mahjoub was probably gleaned from torture, and could not be accepted by the Court. The extent of that finding, however, is still subject to closed door proceedings that Mr. Mahjoub cannot attend. The ultimate decision on what part of the case is based on torture may further delay the start of Mohammadâs âreasonability hearingâ (the decision on whether to uphold the security certificate). The public face of that mostly secret process is slated to begin in October.
The Peoples Commission Network http://www.peoplescommission.org Forum Whose Security? Our Security! Montreal, February 2011
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