Canadian officials call for surveillance cameras to be placed in terror suspect’s home

TORONTO: Canadian officials took the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect’s home.Government lawyer Donald MacIntosh said Monday that he hopes the Federal Court will approve the heightened surveillance for Mahmoud Jaballah, an Egyptian asylum-seeker who Canadian officials have accused of being a “communications link” in al-Qaeda’s 1998 African embassy bombings.

MacIntosh said he knows of no jurisdiction that has tried installing closed-circuit cameras in a suspect’s home, but he intends to submit a formal argument before a hearing next month.

Jaballah, who already lives under extremely strict house arrest, has never been charged with a criminal offense but spent nearly all of 1997 to 2007 in a Canadian jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.

He is being held under Canada’s controversial “security certificate” system, which allows the government to detain and deport foreign-born terrorist suspects with charging them or providing them with evidence of their allegations. Aspects of the certificate system were ruled unconstitutional by Canada’s Supreme Court in February.

Jaballah recently agreed to live under extraordinary surveillance, in return for being let out of jail in April.

Past measures have included having suspects submit to being followed by federal agents during their few weekly excursions, having their calls monitored, staying away from computers and having video cameras installed outside the home. Never before has any Canadian prisoner on bail been known to have had to countenance cameras inside their house.

Prosecutors in the Jaballah case argued last week in court that surveillance in his home is critical for reasons of national security.

Lawyers acting for Jaballah are resisting added surveillance and fighting for increased liberties.

The Federal Court is currently weighing a motion for Jaballah, a former principal at a Toronto Islamic school, to be let out of his Toronto home to teach school lessons to Muslim children. He currently lives at home with his wife and five children.

AP | Tuesday, October 30, 2007