Adil Charkaoui
| Adil Charkaoui | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1974 Morocco |
| Arrested | 2003 Montreal, Quebec, Canada Royal Canadian Mounted Police security officials |
| Citizenship | Canada |
| Charge(s) | supporting terrorism |
| Status | Held, in Canada, on a "Minister's Security Certificate". |
Adil Charkaoui (in Arabic عادل الشرقاوي born 1974) is a Morocco-born Canadian citizen who was arrested by the Canadian government under a security certificate in May 2003.
Before issuing the certificate, evidence was submitted that he had trained in an anti-Soviet Jihadist camp in Afghanistan. The court was also not satisfied with his reasons for visiting Pakistan for six months in 1990. Evidence that he practiced Karate was also among the submissions. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) testimonies included opinions that he would also "have been trained in such areas as: operating rocket-propelled grenade-launchers, sabotage, urban and assassination." CSIS also alleged that "[i]t was noteworthy that one of those who participated in the hijacking of [the September 11 attacks in 2001] had taken martial arts training in preparation..." and suggested that Charkaoui represented a sleeper agent. This led to the issuance of the security certificate by the two responsible government ministers after which he was detained, and such evidence was also enough to uphold the certificate by Federal Court upon review.
Born in Morocco in 1973, Charkaoui joined his sister and parents in moving to Montreal, Quebec in 1995. He has been a Canadian citizen since July 2014.
Charkaoui graduated with an MA from Université de Montréal and is an Arabic-language teacher, who now styles himself as a sheik, and an imam. He is married and has three children, and is a combat sport group leader, as well as a skilled backwoodsman. He is also the director at the Centre communautaire islamique Assahaba. Charkaoui is the President of the Quebec Collective Against Islamophobia, an advocacy rights group he established in 2013.
In the late 1990s, Charkaoui associated with hard-line Montreal Muslims who had turned up in Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and other violence-prone areas.
In 1998, he flew to Pakistan to study religion for a book he was hoping to write; the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believes he slipped across the border into Afghanistan and attended Khalden training camp under the name Zubeir Al-Magrebi, although he denies the allegation. According to friends, he knew Raouf Hannachi well enough that the two would "shake hands when they crossed paths".
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