How do you defend yourself when you don’t know what you’re accused of?
This is the untenable situation in which Miriam Ikhlef finds herself, fired in 2021 from the 911 emergency service despite good evaluations.
For what ? She doesn’t know.
In fact, yes, she knows it: it’s because of her “radioactive” name.
Her uncle Mourad Ikhlef, an Algerian immigrant, was deported from Canada in 2002 under a security certificate. He was suspected of terrorist activities.
But no one told him officially. “Security reasons”, without further details.
The young woman has a bachelor’s degree in public security and police studies from the University of Montreal. She first applied to the Sûreté du Québec, but failed the security clearance.
“The investigator asked me if I was going to the mosque (no), why I had chosen Cégep Maisonneuve…”
The seemingly innocuous question was heavy with innuendo. It is indeed at this cegep that the dubious Adil Charkaoui gave his sermons.
” I have never met him ! My father is Muslim, but I am not of the Muslim faith,” she says.
Even if she had been a practitioner, last I heard, it’s not supposed to be a safety issue anyway…
After this failure, she applies for the 911 service. The investigator in charge of her file notes that she is Mourad Ikhlef’s niece, but understands that she has nothing to do with him. She was 3 years old when he left the country and saw him again when she visited his family in Algiers around the age of 10, but nothing more. “You will understand that it is a taboo subject in the family,” she told me.
She therefore passes the security test for 911 and starts working there in 2020.
She has not given up on her dream, however. She therefore applied to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). Everything seems to be going well, and since she took the test at 911, which comes under the SPVM, she is not worried.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Our columnist Yves Boisvert talking with Miriam Ikhlef
This is not the case: we refuse it. Worse: when she shows up at work at 911, she is summoned to an office to read her letter of dismissal.
For what ?
Security.
Yes, but still?
The union (CUPE) is contesting the dismissal, but to date the grievance has not been heard. A date is set for next fall. She is “extremely disappointed” with the softness of the union in defending her.
The union’s lawyer, Philippe Dufort, explains that the delays, even for dismissal, are unfortunately not unusual.
In the meantime, the young woman went to the Superior Court. Judge Michel Pinsonnault expressed his sympathy with this “nebulous” and “surrealist” decision… but the matter falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the arbitrator.
Meanwhile, M.me Ikhlef went to the Information Access Commission to get the security report on her. A document of 480 pages and another of 31 pages exist. But the SPVM lawyers plead “national security”.
Mourad Ikhlef was not expelled from Canada for nothing.
Reports from intelligence services, particularly French, linked him to the terrorist network of Fateh Kamel, another Algerian established in Canada and active in the 1990s. Kamel himself was convicted of terrorist activities (he provided false passports) in France, and inadmissible to Canada since.
Ikhlef, he was suspected of having had links with Ahmed Ressam, arrested two weeks before the year 2000 at the American border with a car stuffed with explosives. He was sentenced to death in absentia (in his absence) in Algeria, then was imprisoned for a few years pending another trial and was finally released.
Even if he helped Ressam (which he always disputed, and which Ressam himself contradicted in a testimony), how much should his niece pay for it?
“It’s totally Kafkaesque,” says his lawyer Marzia Frascadore. I am outraged by the attitude of the police department. »
An experienced Montreal police officer, not authorized to speak, tells me that he is shocked by this situation. “How do you want her to defend herself?” She doesn’t even know what she’s being blamed for! »
The young woman is not discouraged. She has another job in the security field. But she wants to be a police officer. “I gave myself body and soul to my job, and I was fired without anyone explaining why. I had a lot of support, but colleagues blocked me on social networks, they are afraid of being associated with me, it’s as if I had become radioactive. »
My father left Algeria at 18 because of the war, and he married a Quebecer, who became my mother. They are honest people. It’s humiliating. I saw my mother cry when we talked about state secrets.
Miriam Ikhlef
It will soon be two years, and to date, the SPVM only responds with silence and a total legal barrage.
Seems to me that when you’re being treated between the lines of terrorist acquaintances, the least you could do would be to be given a few details…
That, of course, is if there is anything other than the expelled uncle’s old press and court file…