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2010-01-24 Great White North
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Canadian intel agent defends Harkat 'sleeper' call
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 A senior CSIS agent denied a suggestion Friday that the spy agency was coming up short' with its claims that Mohamed Harkat is an al-Qaida sleeper agent.
In his fifth day of cross-examination at the Ottawa man's security certificate hearing in Federal Court, the CSIS agent identified only as John' defended the spy service's conclusion identifying the one-time pizza deliveryman as a sleeper agent ready to do the bidding of an Islamic extremist network.
While John' told defence lawyer Matt Webber that CSIS hasn't pinpointed what specific organization Harkat allegedly answers to, Harkat's use of an alias, a fake passport and other intelligence points to his role as a sleeper agent. Ultimately, it's a judgment call and the service concluded he was a sleeper,' said John.'
Harkat's denial that he used the alias Abu Muslim one he later owned up to when testifying in 2004 was another significant factor' in CSIS identifying Harkat as a sleeper agent. I believe he would have feared us connecting him back to being a member of the Bin Laden Network,' said John.'
However, Webber attacked CSIS claims that Harkat tried to lay low' following his arrival to Canada in 1995. Webber pointed to several contacts Harkat had with Ottawa police, including a gas station robbery where he worked, an assault during a pizza delivery and three other thefts in the late 1990s and 2001.
Harkat also visited Abu Messab Al Shehre, an Islamic extremist later deported to Saudi Arabia, at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre in 1997. Webber noted Harkat's name and actions would be recorded and monitored at the Innes Rd. jail.
John' testified CSIS has only identified Harkat doing one specific task as a sleeper, with Harkat paying $1,000 for Al Shehre's immigration legal fees at the request of senior al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah.
Webber said that as an alleged sleeper agent, Harkat went several years with no action. In the theory of CSIS, he slept for a long time,' Webber said of the several years of Harkat's apparent inactivity with Islamic extremists after arriving in Canada in 1995, adding tongue-in-cheek that Harkat was a Rip Van Winkle terrorist' in the spy agency's view.
Earlier in the day, John' acknowledged he muddled up' a timeline in previous testimony that put Harkat on a Toronto-bound road trip with high-profile Canadian al-Qaida operative Ahmed Said Khadr. It's not that I didn't know the details. I simply muddled it when I was testifying on the stand,' said the agent about incorrectly testifying in November 2008 that Khadr had already been arrested on terrorism charges when he took the van trip with Harkat.
John' said his error occurred to him a few days after his testimony but he didn't inform lawyers representing the federal immigration ministry, which is seeking Harkat's deportation to his native Algeria. It didn't occur to me that anything else was required,' John' told Webber of correcting his testimony. 
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Posted by ryuge 2010-01-24 00:34||
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