Even before the flight arrangements are made to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home from Sudan, there's a rising clamour for a full-blown inquiry, an apology - perhaps even a settlement - over the Canadian government's role in his six-year exile.
"Abdelrazik's case is far more grave than [Maher]Arar's in terms of Canada's involvement," said the NDP's Paul Dewar, the Ottawa MP who has championed his case in the Commons. "This has been a form of Canadian rendition, exiling a citizen when there was no evidence against him."
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's terse announcement in Parliament Thursday provided no details about how the government will make good on the court-ordered obligation to repatriate Mr. Abdelrazik.
"The government will comply with the court order," Mr. Nicholson said, referring to an order by Mr. Justice Russell Zinn of the Federal Court that Mr. Abdelrazik be brought home with a diplomatic escort within 30 days.
Yavar Hameed, one of Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyers, said government officials contacted him Thursday afternoon after Mr. Nicolson's announcement to begin working on arrangements for the repatriation.
Mr. Hameed said Mr. Abdelrazik's return won't end his problems. He has to think about work (his assets are frozen by the Canadian government) and about how he is to live, Mr. Hameed said. "He has to think about what sort of legal steps he should take and whether he should seek redress."
Mr. Arar got an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and $10-million in compensation for Canada's role in getting him shipped to Syria where he was tortured.
In Mr. Abdelrazik's case, the involvement of Canadian governments lasted far longer and was more direct, although government lawyers and ministers have consistently claimed they were always acting in Mr. Abdelrazik's best interests. "I'm pleased, first of all, for Mr. Abdelrazik, that he's able to return home and that what the court called a Kafkaesque process has finally come to an end," said Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, an internationally respected human-rights advocate who was justice minister in the Liberal government when Mr. Abdelrazik was first thwarted in his efforts to return home.
"We need governmental accountability," from both Liberals and Conservatives, Mr. Cotler said, although he stopped short of calling for a full-blown public inquiry. "What did the governments know and when did they know it and what did they do or not?" Mr. Cotler asked.
He also said it was vital to determine whether "CSIS was complicit" in arranging for Mr. Abdelrazik's imprisonment, an allegation supported by Canadian documents but flatly denied by CSIS, which has demanded an inquiry to clear its name.
Mr. Cotler also said that Judge Zinn had determined that Mr. Abdelrazik's assertions that he was tortured during his two imprisonments in Sudan "was well founded and we need to know the extent of that torture and of any Canadian involvement."
Early last year, Mr. Abdelrazik lifted his shirt to show Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, the scars he says were made by his Sudanese torturers. However, government lawyers, cross-examining Mr. Abdelrazik by long distance as they fought his repatriation suit, tried to get him to admit that he had mutilated himself as part of an obscure tribal rite.
Mr. Dewar said both former Liberal ministers and current Conservatives ones have much to answer for and explain.
"The conduct of Canadian spy agencies was so egregious, that it must be examined," he said.
Mr. Dewar said he was looking forward to hearing from Mr. Abdelrazik but that his account likely wouldn't answer all of the questions.
"I'm not looking for an inquiry for an inquiry's sake, but I am hard-pressed to think we can find everything out without one," he said.
Lurking behind the still-unexplained treatment of Mr. Abdelrazik by successive governments over six years, is the troubling suggestion that he was being mistreated because he was Muslim, African and not white.
Many of the government's harshest critics - to the fury of Mr. Cannon - have noted the stark differences between Mr. Abdelrazik's treatment and the $80,000 private chartered jet the government sent to repatriate Brenda Martin, a convicted felon in Mexico whose case had attracted more sympathy among mainstream Canadians. "My view is there are no second-class citizens," Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae said Thursday. "There are no second-class Canadians and Canadian citizens deserve, and in fact require, the support of their government when they are overseas."
With a report from Bill Curry in Ottawa