Canada free to bring Abdelrazik home: UN

[CHIMO]

Source: The Globe and Mail

Canada is free to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home and doesn't need to ask for permission, the UN official overseeing the blacklist of alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects said Wednesday.

“Whether it is Abdelrazik or anybody else, it is up to the state in question whether they want to allow the person to come back or not,” said Richard Barrett, co-ordinator of the UN's Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, which oversees the various United Nations resolutions establishing the blacklist on which Mr. Abdelrazik was placed at the request of Washington in 2006.

He said the travel ban exemption allowing for the return of a citizen is so clear in the UN resolutions that governments need not – and most don't – even apply for permits.

“States needn't notify the committee if somebody is going back to their own country, so we don't necessarily know of all the instances where that has happened,” Mr. Barrett said, dismissing the central claim of the Harper government as it fights Mr. Abdelrazik's return.



Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090506.wabdelrazik0507/BNStory/politics/home

[Doctor Cynic]

1. I wonder what mental gymnastics the Harperjugend will do right now.

[Posteritatis]

2. Probably none, just repeating the robotic denial they've done with Khadr & co (nt)

[daleo]

3. Sooner or later we will find out what the Harper government's real motive is

And it won't be pretty.

[CHIMO]

4. Order Abdelrazik home, lawyers tell court

OTTAWA — Order the government to bring him home now, lawyers for Abousfian Abdelrazik asked a federal court judge Thursday, insisting that years of broken promises and duplicity must finally end.

The repeated, and always-tougher, requirements imposed by the government “can only be considered bad faith and reprehensible conduct in the extreme,” said Paul Champ. He asked Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn to “order the government to repatriate” Mr. Abdelrazik, who remains on the UN blacklist of al-Qaeda suspects despite being cleared by Canada's antiterrorist agencies.

Mr. Champ said the government should be ordered to get Mr. Abdelrazik home by whatever means it chooses, whether on a commercial flight or a government jet, as long as the order brooks no further delay.

The government's latest claim, that its hands are tied by the United Nations, amounts to “deliberately twisting what these resolutions mean to try and come up with a means to try and block” Mr. Abdelrazik's return, Mr. Champ said.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090507.wabdelrazik0508/BNStory/National/home

If you are a Canadian you don't want to be in a position of relying on your government. Unless of course one is caucasian.