A Canadian security case hinged on an unverified journalist and inferred ideological consistency.

Evidence

Madame Justice Layden-Stevenson accepts that the Service had no specifics connecting Almrei’s honey business to Al Qaeda, and that they had relied on a single media article by Judith Miller, a journalist whose ‘record of accuracy’ has been called into question, a situation of which J.P. was unaware. She also observes that J.P. could offer no direct evidence of Almrei’s link to remaining insurgents in Chechnya, especially given Ibn Khattab’s death. Similarly, J.P. could not offer proof that Almrei had supplied false documents to Nabil Al Marabh, whom the Service conceded was released by the United States. Clearly short on specifics, the Service is only able to maintain that its basis for the allegation that Almrei supported Islamic extremist ideals is the fact that he lived at a guest house of Ibn Khattab and that there was ‘ideological consistency between Khattab and Bin Laden.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 117