It will likely take several weeks before the Federal Court of Canada holds a hearing on an emergency request ordering Ottawa to return Montrealer Abousfian Abdelrazik home from limbo in the Sudan, said Yavar Hameed,
Abdelrazik's lawyer.
Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, was once labeled an al-Qa'ida member by Canada. He has repeatedly denied any such links.
An injunction request filed Wednesday on Abdelrazik's behalf - against Maxime Bernier, federal minister of foreign affairs and international trade- seeks an order commanding Ottawa to repatriate Abdelrazik, a 46-year-old machinist by trade, "immediately to Canada by any safe means."
Abdelrazik, who has never been charged, remains on a no-fly list and thus cannot fly on commercial aircraft. How his name ended up on that list remains cloudy.
Since Tuesday last week, Abdelrazik has been staying night and day in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.
Documents obtained under the Privacy Act show Foreign Affairs "frustrated the applicant's efforts to return to Canada, and secretly refused an offer by Sudan to fly the applicant to Canada, without notice to him," the court
filing states.
Other documents - among some 1,500 pages of material distributed Thursday by supporters of Abdelrazik at a press conference in Montreal - "seem to indicate" that he was "incarcerated in Sudan at the request of Canadian officials," Hameed said.
In 2003, of his own accord, Abdelrazik flew to Sudan to visit his mother.
While imprisoned there in December 2003, he was interrogated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, the freshly released records show.
He was jailed in Sudan without any charges for a total of about 20 months, said Hameed, and was cleared and has been trying to return home to Montreal since July 2006.
The federal government "has connived to keep" Abdelrazik "in de facto exile in Sudan through a combination of actions taken negligently or in bad faith," according to the court filing.
Neither Robin Drummond nor Marc Boyer, spokespersons for Foreign Affairs and CSIS respectively, immediately responded to requests for comment on the case.
janr@thegazette.canwest.com
