A terrorist taint makes any incidental detail count as confirming evidence

Evidence

Like Majoub, Mohammed Jaballah was tried in absentia and condemned as a member of Al Jihad, something that CSIS learned on 29 November 1999, after the first security-certificate hearing was quashed. At the second security-certificate hearing, Mr Justice Mackay indicated that new information had been offered, including the evidence of the Egyptian hearing. The Service indicated that it had since learned that Jaballah had spent some time in Afghanistan in 1993–4, although he said that he had never been there. Finally, ‘new’ related evidence included that Majoub had Jaballah’s phone number on his person when he was arrested. The mailbox Jaballah rented, but said he never used to communicate with his brother, was in fact used. Finally, a person arrested in Pakistan and deported to Jordan had a computer disk with Jaballah’s mailbox address on it. These three ‘new’ pieces of evidence were combined with old evidence that, as a member of Al Jihad, Jaballah poses a permanent risk. Jaballah’s dangerousness based on this marking is enhanced by these details and furthered confirmed when it is alleged that in the summer of 1998 Jaballah made several calls to the International Office for the Defense of the Egyptian Peoples, an office that CSIS alleged was a cover for Al Jihad and a front for those planning the embassy bombings in Kenya. Jaballah maintained that he was advised by his lawyer to pursue evidence of his refugee claim and that was his reason for calling the office. Finally, the Service made a case that Jaballah had contacts with senior Al Qaeda operatives (Al-Zawaheri in Yemen and Pakistan and Thirwat Salah Sihata in Yemen). His ‘guilt’ in this respect appeared sealed when it was revealed that Jaballah made several phone calls to Yemen from Canada, which he initially denied but then said they were made by his wife. Without the full evidence or a chance to determine its value, the Jaballah case must be carried by the logic that the meaning of these actions lie with the idea that once a suspect is stained by terrorist associations (in this case the Egyptian conviction), we need look no further. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘profiling as verification’ logic in the book’s opening chapter and to Gulati/Mansfield on how security certificates let the state recycle stigmatizing evidence without disclosure. — connects to: A Pakistani anti-kidnap PSA reframed as ‘evidence’ sparked fatal vigilante attacks. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 355
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the evidentiary asymmetry — why ‘new’ evidence is only ever incriminating additions, never exculpatory corrections, in security certificate hearings.