The court read a detainee’s patience and hunger strikes as evidence of extremism.

Evidence

That Almrei failed to disclose information because he feared the consequences is not, in the judge’s view, credible. Put against P.G.’s testimony that the Service believes that extremists are unlikely to give up their beliefs and practices, something Madame Justice Layden-Stevenson notes ‘appears not to have been subjected to empirical analysis,’ Almrei nevertheless remains without credibility. He ‘exhibits patience, strength, determination, endurance and self-discipline and is not easily diverted from his objectives,’ qualities evident in his pursuit of hunger strikes to draw attention to his prison conditions. From her enumeration of these qualities as negatives, we may infer that Layden-Stevenson is proposing that Almrei’s profile might correspond to that of the extremist depicted by the Service. What confirms this assessment, however, is that Mr Almrei has not repented, a finding reached in spite of Almrei’s clear denunciation of Osama bin Laden and his indication that he does not support his ideology. As the judge asserts: ‘I consider the absence of any expression of renunciation of the fundamentalist ideology from Mr. Almrei to be significant.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 120