MONTREAL — A Somali man removed from a May 30 TransAtlantic flight because he is on a terrorism watch list has been granted parole and will be allowed to join family members in Seattle, his lawyer said yesterday.

Abdirahman Ali Gaal, who lived in Toronto in 2008 and sought refugee status in Canada, had been detained since his removal from an Aeromexico flight from Paris to Mexico City that was diverted to Montreal. Mr. Gaal was promptly handed over to U.S. authorities.

At the time, a United States counterterrorism official said inclusion on the U.S. no-fly list means an individual has “the capability, the training and the know-how to do considerable damage.” But Matthew Kolken, Mr. Gaal’s lawyer in Buffalo, N.Y., said the decision last week to release Mr. Gaal on parole shows the allegations against him were overblown.

Mr. Kolken called it “nonsensical” that a man now allowed to walk freely around Seattle with his two children is on a list of people considered too dangerous to enter U.S. airspace.

“He’s not under investigation for criminal prosecution,” Mr. Kolken said. “They haven’t interrogated him with regard to the underlying reasons for him being put on the no-fly list. They instead elected to institute ricky-ticky immigration charges against him.”

Mr. Gaal, who had been living as a legal U.S. resident, is facing removal to his native Somalia. It is alleged that he abandoned his U.S. resident status by moving to Canada for about 10 months in 2008 and that he committed fraud by using an alias on his Canadian refugee claim. His Canadian claim, which was abandoned before a hearing was held, was made under the name Abderrahim Mohamad Odawaa. Mr. Kolken said that was a name Mr. Gaal had gone by in the past.

Under the conditions of his release, Mr. Gaal, 33, must wear an ankle bracelet that tracks his whereabouts, and he is forbidden from leaving the state of Washington, Mr. Kolken said.

Messages left yesterday seeking comment from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were not returned.

In an interview with the National Post last month while he was in custody in Plattsburgh, N.Y., Mr. Gaal said he had recently attracted the attention of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He said FBI agents in Mauritania, where he travelled this year to study Arabic, questioned him about a Canadian member of an al-Qaeda-linked militant group in Somalia. He also said CSIS agents had been asking his wife in Calgary about his travels and activities.

There is concern in both Canada and the United States that young men of Somali origin are travelling to Somalia to join Al-Shabab’s fight to impose Taliban-like rule in the East African country. CSIS called Somalia a “magnet for international terrorists” in its latest annual report to Parliament.

Mr. Kolken said the addition of his client’s name to the no-fly list this spring was the result of racial profiling.

“He spent approximately two-and-a-half months abroad on vacation and was put on a no-fly list because of his race and his religion, not because of any illegal activities,” he said.

National Post

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