Mohammad Mahjoub is one of three Muslim men who are currently targetted by an immigration security certificate in Canada.
Mr. Mahjoub came to Canada as a refugee from the Mubarak regime in Egypt; he was granted refugee status in 1996. He was arrested under a security certificate in June 2000. Never charged, he was imprisoned for a total of eight years, including years in solitary confinement, placed under house arrest for another four and a half years and currently remains under intrusive conditions of surveillance and control.
The security certificate process was declared unconstitional by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 2007 Charkaoui ruling. A new certificate was issued against Mr. Mahjoub in February 2008 under this new process and he was forced to begin the process all over again. The Federal Court has not yet ruled on the ‘reasonability’ of the new certificate against him.
In the context of these new security certificate proceedings, Mr. Mahjoub was subject to an unprecedented violation of his rights. The present fund-raising initiative is aimed at obtaining a permanent stay of the unfair proceedings against him in light of this unprecedented violation.