If Mahmoud Jaballah was really involved with the terrorists who bombed two American embassies in East Africa, killing hundreds, he would long ago have been brought to justice in the United States, his lawyer argued Wednesday. The fact the Toronto father of six has never been charged in the U.S. or anywhere else with a terror-related offence should raise serious doubts about the weight of the secret evidence that has kept him detained on a national security certificate for five years.Making his final arguments in the long and complicated case in Federal Court in Toronto, John Norris urged the judge to reject the classified intelligence compiled against his client. ''Had Mr. Jaballah played any role whatsoever in those events in August of 1998, he would have been charged and he would have been extradited to the United States long before now,'' said Norris. ''Absent any charges, absent those proceedings, there must be serious doubts about the credibility and the reliability of the secret evidence said to implicate him in those events.''
But lawyers for the federal government, which is trying to deport Jaballah for a second time on the grounds that he is a danger to national security, said the fact the Egyptian national has not been indicted is meaningless. ''Mr. Jaballah should take no comfort from a silent record and you should pay it no heed,'' Donald MacIntosh, an attorney for the Justice Department, said.