OTTAWA - Accused terror "sleeper agent" Mohamed Harkat refuted allegations from government lawyers that he fabricated testimony to cover up his participation in a jihad during the first full day of cross-examination Wednesday.

David Tyndale, lead counsel for Citizenship and Immigration, which is seeking to deport Harkat to his native Algeria, repeatedly suggested to Harkat that the sworn account of his flight from Algeria through Saudi Arabia into Pakistan was "incredibly unlikely" and "implausible."

During testimony on Monday, court heard that Harkat, fearing arrest based on his association with the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) political party in Algeria, dropped out of university, went into hiding and fled the country in 1990.

According to Harkat, he left the country with his entire $250 US savings in his pocket and the telephone numbers of Saudi contacts provided by a fellow student with ties to FIS.

"The only thing I start thinking about is to get out of my country," Harkat testified.

During cross-examination Wednesday, Tyndale suggested that Harkat's journey to Pakistan was not motivated out of fear of his impending arrest, but that he had been sent to Saudi Arabia and then to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by FIS to support the mujahedeen fighters.

"No FIS member sent me to Saudi Arabia," Harkat said.

"A university education is the highest thing you can achieve in my country. To run to Saudi Arabia and end up working in a refugee camp in Pakistan -- all my studying to just walk like that in my first year of university ... that's shocking."

Harkat maintained that after fleeing Algeria, he gained employment at a supply warehouse for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the Khyber Pass at the Afghanistan border, through the humanitarian Muslim World League.

Tyndale suggested to Harkat that other young Algerian men who believed in hardline Islamic Sharia law, a pillar of the FIS platform, were joining the mujahedeen in the late 1980s as Soviet forces were retreating from Afghanistan.

Harkat said that while he was aware of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, he denied knowing that fellow students were joining the ranks of the mujahedeen.

Tyndale said it was "extremely unlikely" that Harkat could have landed a job working at the Peshawar supply warehouse with such relative ease, as Harkat had testified, since he was a foreigner who could not have gained the trust of his employers.

Proceedings continue Thursday, when government lawyers are expected to focus their cross-examination on Harkat's time in Canada from 1995 to the present, including evidence gathered by CSIS through years of surveillance.

AEDAN.HELMER@SUNMEDIA.CA