TORONTO - Lawyers still seething after learning Canada's spy agency had been listening to their phone calls with their suspected terrorist clients were demanding answers from the government Friday along with assurances the practice would cease in three other cases.
In addition, they demanded to know on an "urgent basis" how the government planned to destroy records of already intercepted calls.
"We have no explanation yet but I am not finished with this," said lawyer Marlys Edwardh.
Edwardh, who along with Barb Jackman represents Mohammad Mahjoub, said she was "just apoplectic" when she discovered the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had been listening in on their calls with their client.
The information emerged publicly Thursday when Federal Court Judge Carolyn Layden-Stevenson released information supplied at a secret hearing by a senior spy-service agent.
"There are still 19 months of intercepted communications sitting in counter-terrorism, (including) our communications," Edwardh said.
"We're just sending off the first salvo of how do they intend to extract those and destroy them in a manner that doesn't require listening to them."
Mahjoub is one of five foreign Muslim men under a national security certificate as a threat to public safety. Four were released on stringent bail conditions, including agreeing to have their phones tapped.
Despite that consent, solicitor-client confidence is a constitutional right the government had no right to breach, the lawyers said.
Layden-Stevenson ordered the practice stopped in Mahjoub's case.
"The analyst, upon identifying the communication as one between solicitor and client, shall cease monitoring the communication and shall delete the interception," she wrote in her order released Friday.
It was not immediately clear whether the order would be applied to the three other suspected foreign terrorists in similar circumstances.
"It's quite clear with respect to everyone who is out on bail that CSIS is doing this," said Edwardh.
Ottawa lawyer Matt Webber confirmed his calls to his client, Mohamed Harkat, were intercepted and was pressing the Dept. of Justice to order it stopped.
"Something will happen," Webber said.
"I need to get this rectified to my satisfaction so I can recommence communication with my client."
Edwardh said she was not naive to assume the spy agency -- which was tapping the phones at the request of the Canada Border Services Agency -- would hang up when a call turned out to between lawyer and client.
The border security agency has never interfered with her letters to her clients, she said.
"The one bit of mail that is never opened and is never intercepted are my letters because they say solicitor-client privilege -- any idiot could figure that from a law office," Edwardh said.
Ultimately, she said, it comes down to trusting the spy service will now refrain from listening to calls involving lawyers.
"I'm not sure that there's any other option for those of us who work within the administration of justice."
Neither security agency had any immediate comment Friday.
