IF IT CAN happen to him, an authentic and police-declared innocent Canadian citizen, it can happen to anyone.
You can leave your ranch in Acme, Alta., or your farm at Cadillac, Sask., for an overseas visit, discover you are mistakenly on some terrorist watch list and in the post-Sept. 11 world, find yourself in legal, citizenship and safety limbo.
‘Him’ is Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen originally from Sudan who has been trapped for six years in that country because the United States in 2003 got him onto a United Nations terrorist list as a Muslim extremist. He went back to visit a dying mother.
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He was imprisoned for two years and tortured in Sudan prisons. Sudan, not known for its lenient view of prisoners, concluded he is an innocent man.
In Canada, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service both have said in writing that he is innocent.
Yet Abdelrazik remains trapped in Sudan, denied by this Conservative government and foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon in particular the right to return to Montreal to be with his wife and daughters.
For almost a year, he has been given sanctuary in the Canadian embassy in the Sudanese capital without money and refused the ability to leave.
The Conservative government continues to change the rules that would allow him to return.
This is an egregious abuse of government power, a violation of the duty of Canadian governments to help their citizens, a violation of the Charter of Rights and an embarrassment of unexplained rigid ideology by Cannon and Conservatives over the rule of law and the usual assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Abdelrazik has never been charged and has been cleared by law enforcement agencies, so he shouldn’t even need to rely on the presumption of innocence. By all rational standards, he is innocent.
Only some twisted Conservative view of terrorism, Muslims and second-class Canadian citizens has him in this predicament.
He could be you, although NDP MP Paul Dewar suggested last week if he was white, non-Muslim and had a name like Martin, he would not still be there.
He could be me.
Some decades ago, my name apparently coincided with some bad American and border crossings became difficult.
A driving trip from Ontario to New York saw my car literally torn apart in search of something. A flight from Washington to Ottawa was delayed while I was questioned.
I never could find out what the issue was. It was spooky but I was never jailed, tortured or denied entry by my government.
Abdelrazik has been given a number of hurdles by the Conservatives, the latest being that the penniless man must buy a ticket and find an airline willing to fly him home. He found the airline and hundreds of Canadians defied a government threat to jail them for aiding a terrorist to buy him a ticket for last Friday.
Two hours before the flight, Cannon changed his mind and said Abdelrazik would not be issued travel documents because this 11-month resident of a Canadian embassy is a national security threat.
This is outrageous Conservative ideological paranoia.
He could be me, stranded in limbo with no explanations.
He could be you.
