Harper’s backdown on Abdelrazik
The Harper government blinked today. It backed down completely on its refusal to give Abousfian Abdelrazik, Canadian citizen, the right to return home after years of close custody in our Embassy in Sudan:
Tories to allow Abdelrazik to return to Canada
Toronto Star Jun 18, 2009 04:04 PM
OTTAWA – Abousfian Abdelrazik could soon be coming back to Canada.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced this afternoon in Parliament that the federal government will comply with a court order to return him to Canada after he has been stranded in Sudan for more than a year.
“The government will comply with the court order,” Nicholson said in response during question period, in response to a query from Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.
I wrote about this situation in April, commenting then that “if Mr. Abdelrazik has committed a crime, bring him home to Canada for trial. If not, he has the right to return unmolested.”
In an interview with Don Newman on CBC TV’s Politics, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Mr. Abdelrazik would be coming home “as a free Canadian” with the right to do whatever he wishes.
A full-scale public inquiry is required into this mish-mash of spy boondoggling, government obstinance, and general disregard of the Charter rights of a Canadian citizen.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Cannon described Mr. Abdelrazilk as a threat to national security. This, despite the fact he’d been cleared by both the spy agency CSIS, and the RCMP.
This case is worse than the Marer Arar case, according to the NDP’s Paul Dewar. He wants the Commons foreign affairs committee to hear Mr. Abdelrazik’s story first-hand.
In the Arar case, U.S. authorities sent him off to Syria to be tortured. In the Abdelrazik case, it appears it was Canadian authorities who had him put in jail in Sudan.
You can be sure that Mr. Abdelrazik will be suing the Government of Canada. You can’t have people sent into the torture cells of third world countries with no evidence of wrongful doing.
Through all the years of the Cold War, we witnessed the build-up of enormous spy regimes, at great cost to the public, all of which yielded no value whatever to the security or well-being of the population.
When Communism came down, it was because of the bank-busting pursuit of military might by the Kremlin. The U.S. was within a hair’s bredth of similar collapse when Moscow gave up the ghost.
Our spy agencies are good at nailing innocent people on marginal evidence. Not so good at defending the principles of democracy and justice.
