A Syrian terror suspect appeared in court yesterday for the first time since Canada's intelligence service admitted that two confidential informants used in the case had credibility problems. Hassan Almrei sat in a Toronto courtroom as federal lawyers portrayed him as a devoted jihadist, and his own lawyer argued the government's case had been irreparably tainted by the conduct of CSIS.Mr. Almrei was arrested in 2001, two years after he used a false passport to enter Canada. The federal government called him a member of the Osama bin Laden network and a threat to national security. But last week, CSIS notified Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley that one of its informants had been deemed "deceptive" and a second had not taken a lie-detector test, as CSIS had earlier told the court. It was the second time in recent weeks that CSIS had admitted to reliability troubles with its informants; the agency had also failed to notify the Federal Court that a confidential source used in the case against Algerian terror suspect Mohamed Harkat had failed a lie-detector test.
Lorne Waldman, Mr. Almrei's lawyer, said CSIS had provided three reports to the court about the informants used in Mr. Almrei's case but all were inaccurate. He said the intelligence agency had shown a "pattern of consistent non-compliance." Justice Mosley, who must decide whether the government's case against Mr. Almrei is reasonable, said he was concerned about the matter and that the new information about the CSIS sources would factor into his rulings.
Federal lawyer Marianne Zoric told the court Mr. Almrei should be deported because of his membership in a terrorist group and because he is a security threat due to his past participation in armed jihad. She said Mr. Almrei had attended training camps in Afghanistan, one of them under the command of the late Chechnya rebel leader Ibn Khattab. He also participated in paramilitary activities in Tajikistan, she said. Unlike the "Gucci jihadis" who made a single trek to Afghanistan to fulfill a youthful curiosity, Mr. Almrei "went back again and again" and "made multiple returns to jihad," she said. "He returned repeatedly from 1990 to 1995."
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Canada's security-certificate law may be crumbling, but it will keep one al-Qaeda suspect imprisoned for at least a few more months. 
Canada's Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear the appeal of a second Arab Muslim held under a secretive process allowing the government to detain and deport terror suspects without revealing the intelligence used to build the case against them. 