A former senior official with Canada’s Security and Intelligence Agency has denied claims that the spy agency intervened to capture then-terrorism suspect Abusufian Abdelrazik in Sudan in the early 2000s.
The CSIS official, identified only as “T” in federal court, testified for the third day in a row Friday as part of Abdelrazik’s $27 million lawsuit against the federal government. Abdelrazik’s claims accuse the government of complicity in his arbitrary imprisonment.
The Sudanese-born Canadian national alleges that the federal government encouraged his detention by Sudanese authorities and actively prevented his return to Canada over several years.
Abdelrazik, 62, was arrested in Sudan in 2003 while on a trip to see his mother, and was interrogated by Sudanese officials and CSIS officers while in custody over suspicions of links to extremists, the court heard.
He returned to Canada in 2009 after a federal court ruled that Ottawa violated his constitutional rights by refusing to grant him an emergency passport.
For several hours on Friday, Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer, Paul Champ, presented 2003 T-Government emails and documents that the lawyer suggested showed CSIS was trying to interfere with the work of consular officials on Mr. Abdelrazik’s behalf. Ta.
Mr. T, who works in counter-terrorism and has been involved in Mr. Abdelrazik’s file for many years, reiterated that CSIS was not asking Sudan to detain Mr. Abdelrazik. It also reiterated that CSIS cannot prevent Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel from providing consular services.
“Obviously, you can’t prevent them, but you can scare them. You can continue to label Mr. Abdelrazik as inflammatory,” Champ said.
“You could tell them that if he was released and did something, Canada would be criticized. And he would do something like that to influence the decisions of the Foreign Office. That’s what the Foreign Office did. Isn’t that what you’re doing?
“T” said otherwise.
Other CSIS officials fear international backlash
In a Dec. 15, 2003 email, Scott Hetherington, then director of foreign intelligence at the Department of Foreign Affairs, told CSIS that Sudanese officials were only detaining Abdelrazik “because Canada requested that he be detained.” He said he has said that.
“T” claimed that the request did not come from CSIS.
In other evidence presented in court on Friday, one of “T’s” subordinates expressed concerns to the Foreign Ministry about what would happen if Abdelrazik was released. The names of CSIS employees were redacted from documents shown in court.
CSIS officials called Abdelrazik “one of Canada’s most dangerous and violent Sunni Islamic extremists” and believe he “will resume activities associated with serious threats in Canada and elsewhere.” said.
CSIS officials also warned that Canada would respond with “international condemnation” if Mr. Abdelrazik participated in a terrorist operation.
“T” said that was one employee’s opinion and he did not agree with that opinion.
Abdelrazik has never been charged with terrorism. In 2007, the RCMP cleared Abdelrazik and publicly confirmed that they had no “substantive information” indicating that Abdelrazik had engaged in criminal activity.
In March 2009, Abdelrazik secured a ticket to Canada for the following month. He was refused an emergency passport.
Abdelrazik returned to Canada in June 2009 after a judge ruled that Ottawa had violated his constitutional rights by refusing to provide him with travel documents.
Lawyers for the federal government rejected suggestions that the Crown breached its duty of care to Abdelrazik or that such breach contributed to his alleged false imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment.
The civil trial was scheduled to begin in 2018, but was postponed pending review of emails, notes and other documents related to the case under the Canadian Evidence Act.
