U.S. asked Canada to help build a case against Abdelrazik
Ottawa lets slip secret document that reveals American request for info to help put Canadian in U.S. court
- Chris Selley: Abousfian Abdelrazik—it's all over but the thousands of unanswered questions
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I don’t know which is more remarkable: the fact Abousfian Abdelrazik is finally coming home, or the fact that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced it in Question Period instead of midway through a Friday afternoon press release dump. The government will comply with, rather than appeal, the Federal Court decision ordering it to repatriate Abdelrazik, Nicholson announced. So after almost 14 months holed up in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum—perhaps the least likely place any government has ever sequestered someone it considers a grave security risk—Abdelrazik’s Kafkaesque nightmare seems to be nearly over. It would be nice to think we'd someday know what lay behind the government's behaviour. But one thing's for sure: the Canadian taxpayer is going to pay dearly for it in the form of lawsuits, settlements and (one hopes) inquiries.
Here’s the thing, though: he can’t come home. Allowing him to do so would violate our obligations under international law and turn Canada into a pariah state, like… well, like Sudan, for instance. I know because Justice Department lawyers said so themselves in April, when they argued their case to the court:
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