A Sudanese-born Canadian national stranded in Sudan must get himself off a UN terrorist no-fly list if he wishes to return home, Canada’s top diplomat was quoted as saying on Monday.
Abousfian Abdelrazik is on “the 1267 UN list and it would seem to me that he would, first and foremost, have to be able to get himself off that list,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in the daily Globe and Mail.
“It’s up to him, its incumbent on him to make sure he gets off that list,” Cannon said.
Abdelrazik has been trapped in Sudan since he traveled there to visit his ailing mother in 2002, after his name appeared on a UN no-fly list over his alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
He claims he was detained for two years and tortured by Sudanese officials, but faced no charges.
Abdelrazik has been cleared of terror ties by both the Canadian and Sudanese authorities. But the Canadian government has imposed increasingly difficult conditions on his repatriation.
In the middle of last month, more than 100 of his supporters chipped-in to pay the destitute Canadian’s US$997 airfare home from a seven-year exile in Sudan. But Ottawa appeared to balk at providing him with an emergency passport.
Abdelrazik once lived in Montreal and has an ex-wife and three children in Canada.
The Canadian government wrote to the UN Security Council in December 2007 to ask to have him removed from the UN terrorist blacklist, but the US reportedly objected.
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