Nov. 30, 2003. 08:17 AM
PETER POWER/TORONTO STAR
A hole still remains in a bedroom door of Fahim Kayani's Scarborough apartment, a constant reminder of his arrest last summer in Project Thread, a sensational — and ultimately false — terrorism case.
 
`They only arrested the Muhammads'
23 students falsely labelled `terrorists'
Failed marriages, lost jobs left in wake

MICHELLE SHEPHARD AND SONIA VERMA
STAFF REPORTERS

When the motorbikes suddenly appeared on the deserted road, Khalid Jahinger knew he was in trouble.

He was near his home in Lahore, Pakistan, and forced to stop his bike and then slowly dismount, thinking maybe this would be the way it all ended.

The four masked men wielding sticks and cricket bats pushed Jahinger and gave him a few whacks before delivering the most devastating blow.

"You should have stayed in Canada," they yelled before driving away. "We know you're a terrorist and if you go to the police, we'll kill you."

Jahinger says he then drove home. He didn't call anyone, worried that reporting the attack would just attract unwanted attention.

In Canada, Jahinger is classified by officials with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as one of 23 Project Thread "targets."

He was the foreign student who triggered a massive multi-jurisdictional investigation last January into a possible Al Qaeda sleeper cell in the Toronto area. But what started out as a sensational terrorism case has devolved into one of simple immigration fraud, with officials now backing away from their initial claim that the men posed a threat to national security.

The men, however, continue to feel the aftershocks of the investigation.

In Pakistan, they live under the shadow of suspicion — marked men who are unable to shake the terrorist label. Here in Canada, many struggle to rebuild their lives.

Jahinger was the first Project Thread detainee to be deported, on Oct. 5, for misrepresenting himself on his student visa. So far, 12 others have followed. Those who remain here — nine Pakistani students and an Indian pilot, all now released from an immigration detention centre on bonds — are claiming refugee status to avoid such a fate.

In a series of interviews with Star reporters this month, the men both here and in Pakistan revealed a series of problems they've encountered following the terrorism allegations.

They talk about broken marriages and engagements. Most have lost their jobs and worry about their prospects for future employment. Most are estranged from their family and friends. They no longer feel free to travel.

Before their arrests, none of the 23 men had ever spent time in a prison, and the weeks — or for some, months — spent behind bars with jeering inmates and guards also took a psychological toll.

Amina Sherazee, a Toronto lawyer representing several of the claimants, says their cases demonstrate how Canada's pursuit of terror suspects can sweep up innocent bystanders.

"The Canadian government has put them in this position. In falsely labelling them as terrorists, they have created refugees out of people who came here as students. Their nonchalance about this is absolutely astonishing," she said.

"We deserve some answers and for someone to be held accountable," said Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and host of the TV show Muslim Chronicle. "If anything happens to these men, the blood is on our hands."

But repeated attempts to interview a variety of RCMP and immigration officials elicited either a "no comment" or a uniform answer.

"It is still an ongoing investigation and I know sometimes that puts us in a negative light, which is unfortunate, but we make minimum comments for a reason and that's to protect the integrity of the investigation," said RCMP Staff Sergeant Paul Marsh.

Marsh said he has advised RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli not to give interviews concerning Project Thread.

`I guess we want to know why they only arrested the Muhammads.'

Muhammad Wali-U-Siddiqui

Zaccardelli has spoken only once about the case, at a Halifax conference earlier this year, where he told reporters: "(There's) absolutely no evidence to suggest that there's any terrorist threat anywhere in this country related to this investigation."

Immigration officials are equally vague on the security allegations and will only say that Project Thread was a success, since it "did reveal a clear pattern of immigration fraud."

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre was "unavailable" to comment this past week, a spokesperson said.

At the centre of the case lies Scarborough's Ottawa Business College, attended by many of these men, who used school documents to extend their student visas.

The school occupied a second-floor space in a Markham Rd. office building. The operation was run by Luther Samuel, who charged students $700 for an acceptance letter for courses in computers and business. Thousands of dollars in remaining tuition was payable in instalments.

The students were taught in six classrooms by a handful of professors. Samuel kept irregular hours and often students would show up for class to find the front doors locked.

If the students raised questions about the school's legitimacy, Samuel brushed aside their fears.

"He said the reason the school was so small was because the main campus was downtown. I never thought the head of a college would lie like that," recalled Fahim Kayani, one of the Pakistanis arrested.

The school was not registered and was found to be handing out documents after its doors closed, so students who had relied on those documents for their visas could be declared "inadmissible" to the country. New powers granted under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which came into effect in July, 2002, also allow authorities to prolong detainment when "the minister is taking necessary steps to inquire into a reasonable suspicion that they are inadmissible on grounds of security."

Those security allegations — contained in a four-page document submitted at the hearings for these men — called the men a definable "group" because, among other factors, they were of similar age, came from the Punjab province in Pakistan (except for one), resided in "clusters," and many were in the United States between May, 2001, and January, 2002. The document also stated that some of the men had unexplained fires in their apartments or an interest in Pickering's nuclear power plant.

One immigration representative labelled the "group" a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda.

More than 400 student files were seized from the Ottawa Business College, but only 23 men were detained — prompting those accused to ask what happened to the other students or the school's director, Samuel, who admitted to fraudulently issuing documents but was never criminally charged.

"I guess we want to know why they only arrested the Muhammads," said Muhammad Wali-U-Siddiqui.

Many of the men maintain they were unaware the school wasn't legitimate and that they attended classes while the college was operating. For those who were aware, they were reluctant to talk to authorities, fearing they'd lose their permits to study.

And while officials maintain Project Thread was about immigration fraud, the men say hours of questioning by immigration and RCMP officials during their detainment had little to do with the bogus school.

"They asked us where Osama bin Laden is," Mohammad Akhtar, one of the accused men, recalled, shaking his head. "Then they said, `Is he alive or dead?' I mean, how do I know where he is? I've never even been to Afghanistan."

Other questions included: What is your definition of jihad? What do you think of (U.S. President) George Bush? Do you approve of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and what do you think of the war in Iraq?

There were also religious questions: What mosque do you attend? How often do you pray? Do you give money to the mosque and what charities do you support?

"It's part of the new national-security paranoid method of investigating," offered Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman.

`It's depressing for me that it was so easy to forget about Project Thread.'

Tarek Fatah, Muslim spokesperson

Waldman is pushing for an inquiry into the case of his client, Maher Arar, a 33-year-old Syrian-born Canadian who was detained by American officials during a stopover in New York on his way home from a family holiday in 2002. The Americans, who suspected he had links with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, ignored his demands to be sent to Canada and instead deported him to Syria.

The telecommunications engineer spent almost a year in a Syrian prison, where he says he was repeatedly tortured.

"We called for a public inquiry for Maher Arar because it's important for everyone. It's not just about Maher, he's always said that; it's so that this can't happen to anyone else," Waldman said. "The people of Project Thread are just as much victims as Maher Arar is. It's a tragedy that so very few people have raised their voices."

A small but committed group of academics, students, lawyers and other Toronto residents has tried to garner attention about the detained men, holding protests and weekly meetings. Calling themselves Project Threadbare, they've marched with placards stating: "Being Pakistani is not a crime."

While the group is not disputing Canada's right to deport if a foreign student is in violation of immigration provisions, it says that person deserves a fair admissibility hearing and should not be labelled a terrorist on what it calls racially biased evidence.

"To depict those people as criminals of the same calibre as people who go around committing acts of violence on other people is a really inappropriate way of thinking about them," said University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin. "These people are being deported not because there is any evidence of terrorism against them; they're being deported for immigration violations. There is no link between those facts — which are, frankly, not uncommon — and terrorism.

"To put it in other terms, just because you're a shoplifter doesn't make you a murderer."

Despite the efforts of Project Threadbare, there has been almost no political attention to the case, and a spokesperson with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, an independent federal agency, said there haven't been any complaints.

Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress goes one step further, saying he believes even the Muslim community ignored the plight of the students while coming to the aid of other Muslims, such as Maher Arar and Hassan Almrei. Almrei has been held without charge in a Toronto jail for more than two years as a security threat.

"It's depressing for me that it was so easy to forget about Project Thread," Fatah said. "Another disillusion is that traditional leadership in the Muslim community did not come forward."

Khalid Jahinger said it was through his application for permanent residency that Project Thread was born.

He first arrived in Canada in December, 1998, landing in Nanaimo, B.C., to attend school. After quickly finding the slow-paced coastal life too much of a culture shock after leaving Lahore, he eventually moved to Toronto. He studied computer and business courses at a variety of schools, including the Ottawa Business College. He attended a few classes there before realizing that the school was a fraud, so he moved on, eventually being accepted at George Brown — Toronto City College and securing a student visa valid until July, 2004.

Since an application for permanent residency must be filed outside the country where the person intends to live, Jahinger traveled to Mexico City to meet immigration officials at the Canadian consulate. The interview went well, he thought, but what he didn't know was that his bank account balance of $40,000 and the reference to the Ottawa Business College troubled the immigration officer.

With a few calls to an anti-terrorism squad in Canada created in the wake of Sept. 11, Project Thread was launched on her suspicions.

One day in May, Jahinger awoke to find immigration and RCMP officers in his apartment and his roommates ordered to the ground. He explained that his father had died of diabetes in 2002 and the large bank account in Pakistan was his inheritance. He pleaded that he didn't have any terrorism ties.

Jahinger and one of his roommates, Aamir Nadeem, eventually spent five months behind bars in a Northern Ontario immigration detention facility before finally giving up the fight and asking to be sent home.

He was ordered deported and flown to Pakistan on Oct. 5.

Pakistani officials questioned him for eight hours upon arrival, a letter from the Canadian consulate in Islamabad sitting on the table as they interrogated him, he said. He was released when his brother posted bail.

Jahinger said in a telephone interview from his home last week that he was reluctant to speak out, but the attack last Saturday convinced him to tell his story for the first time. Life at 26, he feels, is now over.

"My family can support me here for awhile, there's no welfare in Pakistan. I'm still jobless and trying my best," Jahinger said. "I appeared at an interview, but as soon as they found out I was from Canada, they asked what happened. I had to tell them. They didn't call back."

Additional articles by Sonia Verma