Djamel Ameziane - Press Reports

Press Reports

The Globe and Mail suggested that Ameziane's Tunisian contact could have been Raouf Hannachi.

Michelle Shephard, writing in the Toronto Star speculated on the possibility Djamel might be transferred to Canada. Shephard wrote that Djamel might be the unexpected beneficiary of the 2002 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement:

Signed in December 2002, a little-publicized Article 9 of the controversial accord allows the U.S. to send up to 200 migrants to Canada each year. At the time it was signed, it pertained mainly to Haitian and Cuban migrants taken from ships intercepted at sea and housed in Guantanamo.

Shephard's article also addressed the 2005 allegation that Djamel attendance at the Al Salaam Mosque in Montreal justified his continued detention, and the 2006 allegation attendance at the Al Umah Mosque in Montreal justified his continued detention. Djamel's lawyer, Wells Dixon said Djamel acknowledged attending a variety of mosques during the five years he lived in MOntreal in the 1990s, but he could no longer remember their names. Dixon challenged whether simple attendance at a mosque was a valid justification for alleging ties to terrorism.

On August 22, 2008 the Canadian Press reported that Ameziane claimed he had been subjected to a form of water torture. Wells Dixon, one of his lawyers, reported that: "...guards at the base placed a water hose between his nose and mouth and ran it for several minutes." The Canadian Press quoted from a letter Ameziane wrote:

"I had the impression that my head was sinking in water. I still have psychological injuries, up to this day. Simply thinking of it gives me the chills."