We all know the adage, "Politics makes for strange bedfellows", but perhaps none as strange as the friendship between Jewish lesbian couple Diana Ralph and Jean Hanson and suspected Islamic terrorist Hassan Almrei.

Almrei has been held by the Canadian government since October, 2001, when officials nabbed him for allegedly helping an al-Qaeda cell forge checks. Using a phony United Arab Emirates passport, the young man first arrive in Canada back in 1999, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

The government did nothing until the frenzy following the September 11th attacks, at which point they used "security certificate" laws to lock him away. Those controversial laws allow officials to detain "dangerous" illegal aliens and hold them without charge or trial. Similar laws have allowed the American government to hold "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo.

Hearing the case, Hanson and Ralph raised $10,000 for Almrei's bail. The government refused to set him free, however, but the ladies have been in constant communication with the incarcerated Islamist. Ralph - whose grandfather presided over the Nuremberg trials following World War II - tells CBC:

I imagine, for outsiders, it looks kind of weird to be having a couple of Jewish lesbians supporting someone who is supposedly a crazy fundamentalist Islamic terrorist.

It may sound queer, but the ladies consider Almrei a member of the family and have even set up a small room for him in their home in hopes that he'll be released.

Of course, the friendship didn't come easily. Almrei originally criticized the women's religion, as well as their lesbianism, but it seems he's learned to accept their allegedly sinful love.

At first, [Ralph] said, Almrei tried to convert them to Islam, and urged them to end their lesbian relationship, which is forbidden under Islamic law. But eventually he accepted them for who they are, she said.

"We very quickly became very good friends. We've kind of informally adopted him, because he has no other family in Ottawa."

"When he calls, he says to Jean, 'Hello mother,' and he says that to me, too."

The women go on to say that the lessons of the Holocaust taught them the importance of sticking up for the oppressed. The Canadian government, however, refuses to budge. And poor Almrei's foregone food for 127 days to protest his incarceration.