The Canadian government said Thursday it will comply with a court order to let a Montreal man return home from Sudan. Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn ruled this month that government breached Abousfian Abdelrazik's constitutional rights by refusing to give him an emergency passport to return home. The judge gave the government 30 days to comply.Abdelrazik, a Canadian with family in Montreal, is currently living in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum. He was arrested but not charged in 2003 when he went to Sudan to visit his ill mother. Both the Canadian spay agency - CSIS - and American FBI interrogated him over alleged terrorist links. But in the end he was never charged with anything.
Sudanese authorities also questioned him and then released him. But he severed immense hurdles from the Canadian government in his attempts to get home. He went to court arguing that the government was violating his rights.
Read the background story in the commentary: Does Canada have second class citizens?
In the court judgment on June 4, Justice Russel Zinn said, "In this case, the refusal of the emergency passport effectively leaves Mr. Abdelrazik as a prisoner in a foreign land, consigned to live the remainder of his life in the Canadian Embassy or leave and risk detention and torture."
The judge said the government did not follow set procedures in refusing the travel document, nor did it explain whether Abdelrazik posed a security risk if returned to Canada.
Zinn also found that:
- CSIS was "was complicit in the detention" of Abdelrazik six years ago
- By mid-2004 Canadian authorities had determined they would not take any active steps to assist the man's return to Canada, and would consider refusing him a passport in order to thwart his homecoming
- The government's claim that Abdelrazik couldn't fly to Canada due to his inclusion on a United Nations security blacklist was actually "no impediment" to his repatriation
No comments:
Post a Comment