Activists defy law to buy plane ticket for exiled Canadian


LES PERREAUX AND BILL CURRY
From Friday's Globe and Mail
March 12, 2009 at 9:59 PM EDT

MONTREAL and OTTAWA — More than 100 Canadians have chipped in airfare and exposed themselves to criminal prosecution in an effort to force Ottawa to allow a Canadian citizen to fly home from Sudan, where he's been stranded since being labelled an al-Qaeda operative by the United Nations.

The donors, including teachers, students and a couple of dozen university professors from across Canada, bought a $997 airline ticket for Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Now, they say, it's up to the Harper government to live up to a promise to give him travel documents for his April 3 flight from Khartoum to Toronto via Abu Dhabi.

Mr. Abdelrazik, 47, is lost in a legal no-man's land. Canadian and Sudanese authorities have cleared him of being a terrorist suspect after years of questioning, imprisonment and torture.

But he remains on the UN terror list at the behest of the United States, according to his lawyer.

The Canadian government gave Mr. Abdelrazik “temporary safe haven” at the Khartoum embassy nearly a year ago.

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Emma Welford would not say whether emergency travel documents will be issued, as promised, saying only that Canada is obliged to enforce a United Nations travel ban on Mr. Abdelrazik.

But that travel ban specifically permits citizens to return to their home countries.