Abousfian Abdelrazik, the 46-year-old Sudanese Canadian fingered by CSIS as a terrorist suspect and currently stuck in legal limbo in Sudan, has been allowed to stay temporarily in the Canadian embassy in Sudan, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The Globe and Mail first reported on Mr. Abdelrazik's situation on Monday. Although he is not charged with any crime, Mr. Abdelrazik's name is on a United Nations Security Council's list of international terrorist suspects, which requires member states to freeze his assets. He is also on the no-fly list maintained by airlines. He has been stuck in Khartoum for almost five years, unable to return to Canada.
After The Globe reported on his story, Mr. Abdelrazik met with the Canadian consul in Sudan, where he was allowed to stay at least overnight, according to his lawyer.
Mr. Abdelrazik's Ottawa-based lawyer, Yavar Hameed, said his client went to visit the embassy at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday Khartoum time. The Sudanese Canadian was told to keep in touch with the embassy, but told the consul he wanted to remain at the embassy.
"The initial response was confusion," Mr. Hameed said. "He didn't know what to do."
Mr. Abdelrazik was initially allowed to stay for a few hours at the embassy, Mr. Hameed said. He was given pizza to eat and eventually, as the embassy's closing time of 4 p.m. approached, he was given clearance to stay overnight.
It is still not clear whether the government has changed its mind on the issue of granting Mr. Abdelrazik an emergency passport and arranging to transport him back to Canada. Because of his "no-fly" status, Mr. Abdelrazik cannot take a conventional airline home.
At a press conference Tuesday in Ottawa, Mr. Abdelrazik's former wife, Myriam St-Hilaire, said she was demanding his return on behalf of their five-year-old son, who does not remember his father.
"I'm here to be his voice, since he's too young to do so right now. Time is passing by, years are passing by and things aren't changing," she said.
"The question that comes up over and over again: Is he a terrorist? I'll just answer plain and simple. He is not a terrorist. He is a Muslim. He is a practising Muslim, but a peaceful Muslim. And we just wish him to reunite with his family, with his children," she told reporters.
Mr. Hameed said his client has been a victim of "duplicity and disinformation" by Canada's foreign affairs department, which has refused to help repatriate Mr. Abdelrazik based on "nebulous security concerns."
According to the U.S. State Department, Mr. Abdelrazik was "closely associated with Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant responsible for recruiting and for al-Qaeda's network of training camps in Afghanistan." The United States also alleges Mr. Abdelrazik recruited and accompanied a Tunisian extremist named Raouf Hannachi for paramilitary training at a camp in Afghanistan in 1996 "where al-Qaeda and other UN-sanctioned terrorist groups were known to train," and became personally acquainted with Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Abdelrazik has long-denied any claims of wrongdoing, and says he never went to Afghanistan.
The Conservative government has refused to discuss any aspect of the case, even as opposition MPs called for more to be done to help Mr. Abdelrazik.
Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, responded to every journalist's question on the issue Monday by saying he was unable to make any comment because of the Privacy Act.
For the fourth day, the Harper government also declined to answer written questions about why it has refused Mr. Abdelrazik a new passport. His previous Canadian passport expired while he was in a prison in Sudan.
Timeline: Exiled in Sudan
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With a report from Paul Koring