THE JAIL TALE OF TWO CANADIANS

This is the story of the man we freed from jail, and the man we didn't. Ali
Adham Amhaz is a Burnaby resident accused of supplying materials to the
Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah. He was freed on bail Thursday by
a B.C. Supreme Court judge.

Rosie Rowbotham is a former marijuana and hashish smuggler who's not
accused of any crime. He was transferred Thursday from a Toronto jail to
the maximum security Millhaven Penitentiary.

Mr. Amhaz is accused of conspiring to supply blasting equipment,
night-vision goggles, aircraft analysis software and stun guns, among other
things, to the Hezbollah; the U.S. wants him extradited to North Carolina,
where he was indicted in March. But Canada doesn't have a law against
aiding a foreign terrorist group, and that probably means there's no legal
grounds to extradite him.

As well, some of the evidence against Mr. Amhaz may have been destroyed.
And Mr. Amhaz is a Canadian citizen with a wife and four kids in Vancouver,
he did not flee between the time of the indictment and his arrest here last
weekend, and he has agreed to strict conditions for his release.

So after "truly anxious consideration," Justice Marvyn Koenigsberg freed
Mr. Amhaz on $50,000 bail. The judge really had no choice. She said
failing to release him could undermine faith in the Canadian justice
system. No crime against the law of our land, weak case elsewhere, no fear
of flight - no jail time.

In the other case, Mr. Rowbotham was convicted in 1985 of smuggling a large
quantity of marijuana and hashish. He was sentenced to twenty years in
prison. Since his release on parole, he has become a frequent and lively
contributor to CBC Radio's This Morning.

This summer, his common-law wife accused him of assault, putting Mr.
Rowbotham in jail for the past two and a half months. Last week, she
admitted she lied about the assault as revenge because he had threatened to
leave her. The charges were dropped.

Mr. Rowbotham gets a parole hearing at Millhaven on Nov. 23, but he might
yet remain in jail for several months. Corrections officials say they're
treating him the same as they would any other citizen. Oh, and Mr.
Rowbotham also recently produced a series for CBC Radio on alleged
corruption in the corrections system.

Does holding Mr. Rowbotham in jail build faith in the Canadian justice system?