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.
The CBC reports 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 earlier this week 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.
