Abousfian Abdelrazik arrives to Federal Court in Ottawa on Oct. 21.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Abousfian Abdelrazik says the FBI asked him to gather intelligence in Canada for the U.S. law-enforcement agency, but that he denied the request.
The Montreal man, who was born in Sudan and became a Canadian citizen in 1995, offered the account on the second day of legal proceedings in his $27-million lawsuit against the federal government and former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon.
He said the unusual request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation came while he was in limbo in Sudan in 2007, trying to get home to Montreal after being stranded in the African country.
Mr. Abdelrazik, 62, is accusing the defendants in his lawsuit of abandoning him in Sudan for six years – 2003 to 2009 – which he says included detention and torture by Sudan’s intelligence agency over suspected links to terrorism.
After returning to Sudan to visit his ailing mother, he was taken into custody by the country’s National Intelligence and Security Service and questioned about alleged links to terrorism.
Mr. Abdelrazik denies involvement in terrorism.
His case alleges the Sudanese agency acted at the request of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which was monitoring and questioning him in Montreal.
He was initially detained in 2003, then released in 2004, but taken back into custody in 2005 and released again in 2006.
On the stand in federal court in Ottawa, Mr. Abdelrazik said that in 2007, while he was still in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, officials with the country’s intelligence agency asked him to come in for a meeting with agents of the FBI.
The U.S. agents asked him to go into mosques in Montreal, speak to people there and inform on them. Mr. Abdelrazik testified that he rejected the proposal because he did not want to place himself in danger.
Mr. Abdelrazik said he met with the agents in a pair of sessions over two days. He said he was told that if he rejected their proposal, he would be forbidden from returning to Canada and left without a job in Khartoum.
After rejecting the offer, he said he reported the situation to the Canadian embassy and never again heard from the FBI.
Tuesday’s testimony included emotional moments. Mr. Abdelrazik wept as he recalled how guards in a Sudanese prison dealt with a hunger strike he launched to protest his incarceration.
He told his lawyer Paul Champ that he eventually decided to go on a hunger strike while back in custody in October, 2005. He said his jailers tried to convince him to eat. He testified that he refused to do so despite harassment that escalated into beatings.
At one point, he said he lost consciousness and then awoke in a clinic to find an IV in his arm and burn marks on his chest, which he was hard-pressed to explain during his testimony.
Talking about pain in his chest at the time, Mr. Abdelrazik struggled to find the words to detail his experience.
He fought back tears as he sat in the witness box. Then he began sobbing.
A break was called to allow him to compose himself.
In opening remarks this week, federal lawyer Andrew Gibbs said Mr. Abdelrazik was the author of his own misfortune, noting he went to visit a country he had earlier fled.
Mr. Champ, opening his case, told the court that Canadian officials did not want Mr. Abdelrazik tortured, but they did not want him to return to Canada after his detention in Sudan.
Mr. Abdelrazik was expected to continue taking questions from his lawyer on Wednesday before facing questions by lawyers for the federal government.
Witnesses at the eight-week trial are expected to include Mr. Cannon; former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier; former senator Mobina Jaffer and David Vigneault, former CSIS director.
