A Toronto Muslim recently jailed while travelling to Egypt says he is mystified by claims that the terrorism suspicions surrounding him had less to do with his videotaping the CN Tower than his taping inside the Bloor-Yonge subway station.
"All the questions I was asked were mainly about the CN Tower," Kassim Mohamed said in an interview yesterday, recalling his meetings with government agents.
The 38-year-old fast-food-delivery driver came to public attention after launching a $1-million lawsuit against Ottawa. He said that police and spies wrongly listed him as a terrorism suspect before he travelled to Egypt, where he was jailed for two weeks this spring.
The Canadian government is defending itself by saying that police were alerted to Mr. Mohamed after subway commuters called to say that he was one of two men acting suspiciously by making tapes inside the Bloor and Yonge subway stop.
"I did take some subway videos," Mr. Mohamed said. ". . . I was not the only one taking videos on the subway. Right now we can go and I can show you a few people taking videos of the subway, especially Yonge and Bloor."
He said that the subway videos, like the CN Tower video he made, were simply a good way to show his family members what life in Toronto is like.
However, as he made the tapes, Muslim militants had just bombed the train system in Madrid, killing more than 200 people, prompting fears worldwide.
The Toronto Transit Commission and Toronto Police were warning commuters to be wary and report suspicious behaviour. Later, the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would cite a hypothetical subway bombing to explain intelligence-sharing as he gave public testimony in June.
"The reality is what we are doing is we are investigating to ensure the Madrid bombing doesn't occur in Canada, doesn't occur at the Bloor and Yonge subway station," said Ward Elcock, deputy minister of defence at the time.
Referring again to such a hypothetical attack, he said sharing intelligence with foreign governments "isn't some obscure concept out there. It is the possibility of a bomb in the Bloor and Yonge subway station at rush hour, and the kind of carnage that would result in."
Colin Freeze