Abdelrazik to finally return to Canada...

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen who has been camped out in the Canadian embassy in the Sudan for some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abousfian_Abdelrazik

Finally after a six year ordeal he is to return to Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/24/abdelrazik-homecoming024.html

Abousfian Abdelrazik's six-year ordeal will soon end, as his lawyer was to board a flight in Ottawa Wednesday to bring the Montreal man, stranded in Sudan, home.

Abdelrazik, who has taken refuge in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum for the past year, was expected to arrive at Toronto's Pearson airport at 4:45 p.m. ET on Saturday.

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The Canadian Government has done everything possible to prevent Abdelrazik from returning to Canada until finally a court decided Abdelrazik's rights had been violated and he should be returned to Canada. Now we have an attempt to spread dirt about Abdelrazik by releasing a UN document that makes various claims about him being a terrorist--even though he has been cleared by the FBI Canadian Intelligence and the Sudanese authorities. This same type of smear campaign happened in the case of Maher Arar

http://www.maherarar.ca/mahers%20story.php

This is from CTV.

UN document details allegations against Abdelrazik
Updated Tue. Jun. 23 2009 8:36 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian man living in exile in Sudan who the government has been told to return home, is a member of a Montreal terrorist cell and has close ties to senior al Qaeda leadership, a new United Nations Security Council document alleges.
In the document posted Monday on the UN Security Council terrorist blacklist website, it's asserted that Abdelrazik trained at an al Qaeda camp and has provided administrative and logistical support to the terrorist network.
"[Abdelrazik] was a member of a cell in Montreal, Canada, whose members met in al Qaeda's Khalden training camp in Afghanistan," the document alleges.
It adds that Abdelrazik recruited and advised new operatives headed for paramilitary training at Khalden, and that he had told at least one individual that he was "personally acquainted with Osama bin LadenOsama bin Laden."
None of the allegations are new and echo those that the U.S. has levelled against Abdelrazik since 2006, when it added him to the UN Security Council's 1267 terrorist blacklist.
Like previous allegations, none of the ones detailed in the short document contain specifics or cite sources for the information.
Abdelrazik, 47, has denied any involvement in extremism or any association with al Qaeda.
The document's publication comes only days after a federal court ordered that Abdelrazik be allowed to return to Canada. Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn said Abdelrazik's constitutional rights had been breached by Ottawa's refusal to allow him to return home.
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As the below snippet from an article in the Globe and Mail shows, Canadian and US intelligence authorities got the Canadian government to block Abdelrazik's return more than five years ago. Of course even though there is no charge against him the US has not asked the UN to remove Abdelrazik from the UN no fly list--the US put him on it in the first place. The same it true of Maher Arar who is still on the list even though a Canadian government inquiry found him to have no ties to terrorism and awarded him millions of dollars in damages. So far Arar's suits against the US government have been thrown out of court for reasons of national security. He is still officially regarded as a member of Al Qaeda..

This article is from the Globe and Mail.


Paul Koring
From Saturday's Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009 03:33AM EDT
A coterie of high-ranking Canadian security officials first considered blocking Abousfian Abdelrazik's return five years ago at the request of a foreign government, but kept ministers of the then-Liberal government in the dark, The Globe and Mail has learned.
Only days before Mr. Abdelrazik was to be released in July, 2004, from the Sudanese prison where he had been interrogated by Canadian agents, a foreign government believed to be the United States made urgent high-level representations to senior Canadian security operatives seeking “Canada's agreement not to allow Abdelrazik to board aircraft bound for Canada.”
That's exactly what happened, although the role of Canadian security agencies remains murky. Mr. Abdelrazik was denied flights by both Lufthansa and Air Canada. Ever since, and as recently as last month in federal court, Canadian officials have claimed Canada had no hand in thwarting his return and that it was strictly an airline decision.