The Globe and Mail reports today that, “Canada is free to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home and doesn’t need to ask for permission, the UN official overseeing the blacklist of alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects said Wednesday.”
Richard Barrett, co-ordinator of the UN’s Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, says, “Whether it is Abdelrazik or anybody else, it is up to the state in question whether they want to allow the person to come back or not.”
Federal government lawyers will be in Federal Court today arguing that UN rules and the need for permission to fly him over other countries en route to Canada prohibit them from bringing Mr. Abdelrazik back home. The UN’s Mr. Barrett rejects both of these assertions.
The article also reports, “Senior Canadian officials ordered Canadian diplomats to stay away when Mr. Abdelrazik pleaded for them to attend while he was interrogated by visiting U.S. agents. The Bush administration added Mr. Abdelrazik to the UN list and its own no-fly list in 2006.”
“(Mr. Abdelrazik) has never been charged with a crime in Canada, the United States or Sudan. In 2007, the Canadian government asked the UN to delist him, after first getting written assurances from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP that he wasn’t regarded as a terrorist or criminal threat. The delisting request was vetoed, probably by the United States, which claims he is a close associate of Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaeda leader who was water boarded more than 80 times by CIA agents.”
To read more background on this, and to see our action alert as well as the ICLMG action alert, please go to the campaign blog at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=448.
Today’s news article is at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090506.wabdelrazik0507/BNStory/politics/home.
