SONYA FATAH

Held for weeks under a secretive law, Ontario cabbie seeks help clearing name

The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, April 25, 2006
COLIN FREEZE AND SONYA FATAH

TORONTO — After a mystifying detention under a secretive law, a Pakistani refugee claimant was ordered freed on bail yesterday — five weeks after his case generated fears of terrorism in a Toronto suburb.

Public Safety Department officials, who had been holding Raja Ghulam Murtaza since mid-March, told a tribunal yesterday they no longer considered the 40-year-old taxi driver from Newmarket, Ont., to be any threat.

“The minister is not seeking detention,” government representative Edith Ishmael-Decaire told an adjudicator yesterday, reversing the government’s previous position that Mr. Murtaza was a threat to Canada’s security.

Mr. Murtaza should be freed on $10,000 bail by early today. More mundane concerns about the truth of his two-year-old refugee case still hang, but he has been effectively downgraded from a possible terrorism suspect to someone who could have misrepresented himself on his asylum application.

While in detention, he told a reporter that the terrorism allegations were “ridiculous” and that he fled Pakistan for the United States in 1997. Mr. Murtaza has also said that he lived in Houston with his wife, from whom he is now separated, and children, but headed to Canada three years ago to make an asylum claim here after his U.S. claim failed.

His Toronto girlfriend attended a hearing yesterday and urged reporters to rehabilitate Mr. Murtaza’s reputation. “We need help in clearing his name,” said Rose Bertuman, who has dated the cabbie for nearly two years.

No official explanation for the arrest has been revealed, apart from the fact that police invoked a law that allows non-citizens to be jailed. If Canada’s Minister of Public Safety feels there are “reasonable suspicions,” non-citizens can be jailed as terrorists, war criminals or other significant threats.

This power, and the low legal threshold used to trigger it, is controversial. “This is pre-emptive detention,” University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin said. “Imagine the kind of power this gives to the state: ‘We’re going to lock you up until we find a reason to lock you up.’ ”

Police had initially believed Mr. Murtaza was linked to a Kashmiri separatist group that’s banned in Canada for ties to terrorism. Mr. Murtaza’s girlfriend said the RCMP asked her whether he had links to the group, but suggested allegations that he was connected to terrorism were false.

The Canadian government has always kept mum about the case, and news of Mr. Murtaza’s alleged links to terrorism broke only because of leaked information. His apparent vindication would have been kept secret too, had lawyers for the media not fought to open up yesterday’s hearing.

Adrienne Lee, a lawyer for The Globe and Mail, said the Public Safety Ministry asked to close the hearing without giving any reasons.

Transcripts from previous detention reviews remain off-limits to the press for the time being, although media lawyers are fighting to obtain them. And authorities have also refused to comment on the whereabouts of a man reportedly taken into custody with Mr. Murtaza.

The section of the Immigration Act that allows the detention of non-citizens suspected of being terror threats was introduced in 2001. Immigration officials say they don’t use the power often.

Three years ago, in an ill-fated police investigation known as Project Thread, the RCMP and federal authorities rounded up nearly 20 Pakistani men and held them by stating they could be terrorists.

Within days, it became clear that police had built a highly circumstantial case. In public hearings, representatives for the men said the purported links to terrorism were “garbage” and adjudicators agreed. Ultimately, the men were deported for being part of a visa scam.

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Immigrant drivers fear repercussions after co-worker accused of illegal entry

The Globe and Mail, Saturday, April 1, 2006

By SONYA FATAH
With a report from Colin Freeze

NEWMARKET — The recent arrest of two Toronto-area men on immigration charges — and a published report linking one to a notorious Pakistani terrorist group — has cast a chill over neighbours and co-workers while raising fresh concerns about how Canada screens refugee claimants.

In the parking lot of the Antique Mall in Newmarket yesterday, the arrest of Raja Ghulam Mustafa was uppermost in the minds of his fellow drivers for a taxi company.

The parking lot, which serves as a waiting area for drivers manning vehicles owned or leased by Today’s Taxi, had the air of a funeral parlour yesterday. Drivers rolled down their windows, lamenting their colleague’s situation and referring to him in the past, as though his fate had been sealed.

Immigration officials arrested Mr. Mustafa and his brother-in-law, Syed Maqsood Aly, both Pakistanis, two weeks ago. They are accused of being in Canada illegally, and there is a report that Mr. Mustafa is connected to the Pakistan-based Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LET.

Immigration officials and sources at other government agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP, would neither confirm nor deny those reports yesterday.

Many of the vehicles in the Today’s Taxi fleet of more than 70 vehicles are driven by immigrants, most of them Pakistanis. They expressed surprise and disbelief at Mr. Mustafa’s detention and fear of the repercussions of the arrest.

“I’ve been driving to this one location every day for the past three years,” said one driver, who did not want his name published. “This morning when I drove there on duty, I was asked, ‘Isn’t your company the one with the terrorist driver?’ ”

“[Mustafa] is not a terrorist,” said another driver. “Anyone who works 12-, 14-hour shifts to make a living, works very hard. He’s not a terrorist. Terrorists are funded. This is not an easy life.”

Sitting at the wheel of a dark blue van was Bala Nadarajah, who hails from Sri Lanka. “I’ve been in this business for eight years, and I’ve never had a driver as nice as him. You won’t believe it — my 11-year-old son is crying at home because he’s so upset about this.”

Mr. Nadarajah said Mr. Mustafa had not missed a day of work since joining the company last August.

Another driver said immigration officials interviewed him about Mr. Mustafa days before the arrest.

At Today’s Taxis, manager Mahar Fawagers said immigration officers had knocked on his door as well.

He said no driver is employed without a city-mandated driver’s licence and a background check. “They’re supposed to clear this when they issue a licence. As far as I know, he was legally cleared.”

Mr. Mustafa and Mr. Aly are said to have entered Canada from the United States.

Among the reported allegations against Mr. Mustafa is that he adopted the name Raja Ghulam Murtaza when he entered Canada and applied for refugee status.

And what about the cash Mr. Mustafa is reported to have had when he was arrested? “No one knows how much money,” one driver said.

“What did he have, $5,000, $8,000? If you ask me now, I’ll pull out $1,000 from my pocket right now. We work long shifts, we earn big amounts of money at a time.”

Details of the allegations should emerge if news outlets are successful in gaining access to the men’s detention-review hearings, which are run by the refugee board.

Canada can deport those suspected of terrorist ties, though in similar cases the suspicions haven’t always been borne out.

Regardless, the LET group is treated as a serious threat by Canada, which listed the group as a terrorist entity in 2003.

Extremists in Pakistan are generally a concern for the government, and last year the country was visited by the public safety minister of the day and the head of CSIS.

The LET group is not thought to have a large presence in Canada. But Carleton University security-intelligence professor Martin Rudner said LET is a serious threat.

He said members attacked the Indian Parliament in 2001, killing more than a dozen people, and it had jointly operated training camps with al-Qaeda figures.

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