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Government arrests man in Montreal suspected of spying
The Canadian government has made its first espionage arrest in more than a decade launching a highly sensitive case against a suspected foreign spy who was arrested in a Montreal airport Tuesday evening.The man is being held under a security-certificate, a federal-government procedure that allows for the arrest of an immigrant whom two cabinet ministers deem a threat to national security. The process allows for the prisoner to be jailed until he or she is deported. And portions of the case may be forever shielded from the public, and even the defendant. The government's most important duty is to ensure the security of all Canadians. A security certificate has been issued under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act against a foreign national, said Melisa Leclerc, a spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. He is now in custody in Montreal. More information will become available as the Federal Court process unfolds. She would not speak to man's identity, but another government official has identified the suspect as an individual who was alleging to be a Canadian citizen named Paul William Hampel. Security certificates are a power rarely invoked by the Canadian government, which has used the process less than 30 times in the last 20 years. Terrorism cases have preoccupied the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in recent years. Yet espionage remains a big concern; as of last year, CSIS was trying to keeps tabs on 152 potential spies from more than 30 rival agencies. Canadian experts have long singled out China and Russia as areas of concern in terms of foreign espionage, both during and after the Cold War. For all of the changes that Russia underwent ... its intelligence practises remain essentially unchanged, said Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. Canada was always a favourite target for a number of reasons, Mr. Wark said. The country has long been regarded as a potential secondhand source for secrets concerning the United States and allied agencies, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And high-tech corporations in Canada also represent potential targets for corporate espionage. In 1945, Soviet Embassy cypher clerk Igor Gouzenko sought refuge with the RCMP, taking with him papers that implicated several Canadians and British scientists in a Soviet plot to steal atomic secrets. The Gouzenko papers helped convict a dozen Canadian spies, including a member of Parliament. Posted by: .com 2006-11-16 |
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