A detention review hearing for a man who allegedly had links to millennium-bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam has been adjourned until Sept. 15. The delay in the hearing by the Immigration Refugee Board was granted at the request of Samir Ait Mohamed's lawyer because he wanted more time to familiarize himself with the immigration case. Mohamed was accused of having links to Ressam, who last month was sentenced to 22 years in a U.S. prison for plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport. The United States wanted Mohamed extradited but dropped their request after Ressam stopped co-operating with American authorities in fingering his accomplices. Ressam had provided the initial information that led to Mohamed's arrest.Once the extradition request was formally dropped, the Canadian Border Services Agency faced the choice of detaining the Algerian-born Mohamed on an immigration warrant or letting him go free. This hearing was ordered after Mohamed made an appearance Monday in B.C. Supreme Court. Mohamed faced a removal order before being charged in February 2002 in connection with Ressam. He was initially arrested in 2001 on an immigration matter.
The United States initially charged Mohamed with conspiring to commit terrorist acts, giving support to a terrorist act and conspiring to commit credit-card fraud. He was held in custody pending extradition.
But Mohamed's Vancouver lawyer, Ian Donaldson, said this week U.S. officials knew as early as 2003 that Ressam, caught in 1999 trying to cross into Washington state from British Columbia with a car-load of explosives, was not helping them make a case against Mohamed. Mohamed maintains Ressam lied to implicate him in the so-called millennium-bombing plot in hopes of a lighter prison sentence. Mohamed left Algeria in 1989 and tried unsuccessfully to gain refugee status in England and Germany before entering Canada in 1997. He was denied Canadian refugee status in 1998 but appealed and was granted a new hearing in 1999.