Calgarian acquitted of terror charges in Algeria

An Algerian court has acquitted a Calgary man who spent more than a year in prison in that country accused of belonging to a terrorist organization.

Abderrahmane Ghanem, 30, was arrested in May 2016 in Algiers while travelling with family. He was charged with belonging to a terrorist organization and could have faced up to 20 years in prison.

Tuesday, an Algerian court rejected evidence provided from “outside sources” that Ghanem was a terrorist, the man’s Canadian lawyer said.

“His family is extremely ecstatic,” said Gary Caroline, Ghanem’s Vancouverbased lawyer.

But Caroline and Ghanem’s family in Oman and Canada remain concerned about the role played by Canadian authorities in his imprisonment.

“Canada was not mentioned directly, but the implication is and was that the Algerians were acting on information provided to them by CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service),” Caroline said.

“What they did by sharing the information was take over a year out of the life of a Canadian citizen for no reason.

“He was in a prison cell with 75 other men, sharing one toilet, a hole in the ground, for 13 months. This is serious,” Caroline said.

Caroline said the suspicions against Ghanem were based on his previous association with a group of young men in Calgary who became radicalized while frequenting an apartment near the former 8th and 8th mosque downtown.

Some of those men went on to fight in Iraq and Syria and were killed.

Ghanem, who didn’t follow his radicalized friends to those countries, left Calgary in 2012 to travel to his birthplace, Algeria, and eventually Oman where his parents are currently working in the oil industry.

Ghanem’s family have previously acknowledged that while he was radicalized in Calgary, he never followed through on those thoughts or committed any illegal actions. And his lawyer said Ghanem did nothing in Algeria to warrant his arrest.

“This family has really worked hard with Abderrahmane to move him away from the people he was hanging out with,” Caroline said.

Caroline said if CSIS had a concern about Abderrahmane’s activities in Calgary, those concerns should have been dealt with in Canada.

“They sort of subcontract the prosecution to a country that doesn’t play by the same rules as we do or expect others to play by,” Caroline said.

“It’s disturbing.”