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Abousfian Abdelrazik, fingered as an al-Qaeda operative but currently sheltering in the "temporary safe haven" of Canada's Khartoum embassy, says Canadian diplomats knew he was being tortured in grim Sudanese prisons but did nothing.

In a telephone interview Monday, Mr. Abdelrazik said he told a Canadian diplomat he was being repeatedly beaten by Sudanese interrogators in 2004 or 2005. "He didn't care," Mr. Abdelrazik said.

Mr. Abdelrazik, who was to submit a sworn affidavit about his torture in Sudan to Federal Court in Ottawa Monday, confirmed all of the details in the draft document, including that he was interrogated by CSIS agents while in a Sudanese jail. However, the document remained unsigned because Canadian diplomats refused to deliver the faxed draft to Mr. Abdelrazik to sign.

Canadian government documents, which came to light in April, revealed he had been imprisoned in Sudan "at our request," meaning at the request of Canadian agents. Lawyers for Mr. Abdelrazik included that information in a filing on June 17.

In its response, delivered Monday, the Justice Department opted not to dispute the assertion that Mr. Abdelrazik had been imprisoned at Canada's request, in effect conceding the fact before the court.

The documents presented in court, coupled with Mr. Abdelrazik's accounts of torture, suggest Canada secretly arranged for Sudan to arrest and imprison him, then sent Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents to interrogate him in a Sudanese prison while diplomats knew that he was being tortured but ignored that fact.

Mr. Abdelrazik is among several hundred al-Qaeda suspects, most of whom have never been charged, on a United Nations Security Council list. Member countries are supposed to seize the assets of those on the list, and anyone giving them money, even for legal expenses, is committing a crime.

Canadian diplomats in Khartoum refused Monday, for the second day in a row, to permit Mr. Abdelrazik to sign the affidavit; his signature would have made it a sworn affidavit.

"I want to sign it but the consul said he cannot give it to me," he said Monday in the interview from the embassy. "I think he is just trying to delay or block the process."

In Ottawa, the document, unsigned and labelled as an exhibit, attached to an affidavit sworn by his lawyers, was submitted to Federal Court Monday.

"We want the government to repatriate Mr. Abdelrazik," said his lawyer, Yavar Hameed. That means Canada needs to charter a plane or send a government aircraft to bring him home."

The case for flying Mr. Abdelrazik home is stronger than it was for Brenda Martin, Mr. Hameed said, referring to the Trenton, Ont., convicted in Mexico of involvement in a scam operated by her former boss. In May, the Harper government sent a chartered jet to Mexico to take her back to Canada.

"Mr. Abdelrazik is black and a Muslim but he hasn't even been charged with anything, either in Canada or Sudan," Mr. Hameed said.

For years, successive Canadian governments have refused to issue Mr. Abdelrazik a new passport. The one he had expired and was returned to the Canadian government while he was imprisoned in Sudan.

He has been marooned in Khartoum since he was released from prison nearly two years ago. Ottawa blames the airlines, saying it does not control the no-fly lists. But it has also kept him off Canadian government planes that have travelled to and from Khartoum.

Mr. Abdelrazik first arrived in Canada in 1990, was granted political asylum, married a Canadian and became a citizen in 1995. He says he was harassed by CSIS officers and eventually returned to Sudan in 2003 to visit his ailing mother. He was arrested there in September of 2003. He spent nearly two years in foul, overcrowded Sudanese jails, where torture and other abuse is rife, according to widely available and internationally recognized human-rights reports.

He has been living in the Canadian embassy since April 28. Ottawa apparently accepts that he is at risk if he is ordered out, or it would not have allowed him that safe haven.

Ministerial involvement in the case remains unexplained. Former foreign minister Maxime Bernier sent his chief of staff and parliamentary secretary to interview Mr. Abdelrazik when the minister was in Khartoum last winter. The Harper government also says it sought, but failed, to get Mr. Abdelrazik removed from the UN's list of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

"The matter is under litigation and we cannot comment," said Anne Howland, spokeswoman for current Foreign Minister David Emerson. Other senior officials said the file is actually being handled in the Prime Minister's Office.

In his still-unsworn affidavit, Mr. Abdelrazik provides a graphic account of torture: "The beatings were administered with a rubber hose of about two feet in length, applied to my back, head and legs. This abuse was in the context of interrogation by the Sudanese about the prison escape that had taken place, and interrogation by the two men who were introduced to me as Canadian."

"To avoid further torture, at times when I answered the Canadian interrogators, I gave them what I thought they wanted to hear, irrespective of whether it was true."

Repeated calls to the Foreign Affairs Department about Mr. Abdelrazik's assertions were not answered Monday.