Please note that the Council of Canadians along with the Canadian Labour Congress and other organizations are helping to promote a speaking tour by Abousfian Abdelrazik between September 24 and October 16. He will be speaking in Montreal, Halifax, Fredericton, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Williamstown, Gatineau, Ottawa, Kingston, Peterborough, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, London, Guelph, Windsor, Sudbury, Sault Ste-Marie, and Winnipeg.
The dates for the speaking events in each city are not yet available, but should be posted soon at http://peoplescommission.org/en/abdelrazik/events.php.
On June 19, we noted — Congratulations to all the individuals and groups – including Project Fly Home, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Amnesty International, the federal New Democratic Party, and the Canadian Labour Congress – for their work in winning the return of Abousfian Abdelrazik to Canada.
At that time, the CBC reported that, “The federal government will comply with a Federal Court order to allow the return of Montrealer Abousfian Abdelrazik, who has been stranded in Sudan for six years after being labelled an al-Qaeda suspect, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Thursday. …Earlier this month, Federal Court Justice Russell Zinn ordered the Canadian government to fly him home early next month and provide those travel plans by Friday. …The Conservative government had refused to issue him travel documents to return home because his name was on a UN Security Council list banning travel for terrorist suspects (but) the judge said the government’s claim that Abdelrazik couldn’t fly to Canada due to his inclusion on the UN blacklist was actually ‘no impediment’ to his repatriation.”
The Council of Canadians supported Mr. Abdelrazik’s return to Canada through the work of our chapters (notably the Montreal and London chapters), participation in coalition efforts (with the ICLMG and Project Fly Home), demonstrations (including one targeting foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon), and action alerts at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=390 and http://canadians.org/action/2009/14-Apr-09.html.
The CBC report is at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/06/18/montreal-abdelrazik-federal-government-sudan.html.
