Canada has asked the UN to remove one of its nationals from a list of terror suspects, a Sudanese-Canadian who has been blocked in Sudan for five years, his lawyer said on Friday.
Attorney Yavar Hameed complained of “an inherent contradiction” in the Canadian government’s position in Abousfian Abdelrazik’s case.
“At some level within the [Canadian] government, there are obviously some people who have been trying to frustrate efforts to bring Mr Abdelrazik back to Canada,” he said. “In other departments there have been some efforts or at least some movement to try at least to have him delisted and to try to go through some of the motions necessary to bring him back.”
“But to the extent that it is not a coherent position, it’s not possible for any forward movement to happen,” Hameed said.
Abdelrazik, 46, went to Sudan in 2003 to visit his mother.
He was arrested and jailed based on intelligence supplied by Canadian services which suspected him of ties to al-Qaeda, Hameed said.
Abdelrazik was later set free but could not return to Canada because he no longer held a passport and was on a UN blacklist.
The blacklist status in turn led airlines to prevent Abdelrazik from boarding a plane.
He is currently at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum.
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