Former senator Mobina Jaffer arrives at Federal Court to testify in the Abousfian Abdelrazik civil trial in Ottawa on Monday, Oct. 28.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
A former Canadian senator says the head of Sudan’s intelligence agency told her during a 2004 visit to the northeast African country, that they had given a detained Montreal man “the treatment” to find out if he was a terrorist and determined he was not.
“He said to me, ‘Why are you not taking him back?’”
Multiple times during her testimony in federal court, Ms. Jaffer expressed regret that she had not done more to help Mr. Abdelrazik, who was looking on from the spectators’ gallery of the downtown Ottawa courtroom during the proceedings.
“Now, when I look back, I am very sorry I didn’t do more for this man because he suffered a lot. What’s the point of being a senator in Canada if you can’t help your own Canadians?” said Ms. Jaffer, who retired from the Senate in August.
Abdelrazik tells of despair when Ottawa denied him passport to return home from Sudan
Mr. Abdelrazik, who was born in Sudan and became a Canadian citizen in 1995, has launched a $27-million lawsuit against the federal government and former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon.
The 62-year-old man 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.
Abousfian Abdelrazik arrives to Federal Court in Ottawa on Monday, Oct. 28.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
His case alleges the Sudanese agency acted at the request of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which was monitoring and questioning him in Montreal.
On Monday, Ms. Jaffer, questioned by Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer Paul Champ, said she travelled often to Sudan after she was appointed a peace envoy to the Sudan by former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
Ms. Jaffer said she met with Mr. Ghosh often on trips to the Sudan to talk about where she was going to travel in the country so they would not interfere in her work.
Recalling her 2004 meeting with Mr. Ghosh, she said the intelligence officer grew exasperated with her after she expressed her own frustration about a matter in Sudan.
“He said, ‘You’re not completely clean either’ and he told me about Mr. Abdelrazik.. To the best of my recollection, that was the first time I hear about him.”
“He said to me, ‘Your country thought he was a terrorist and they wanted me to find out if he was a terrorist.’” She said he added that finding out if someone is a terrorist “is not pleasant in Sudan.”
She said Mr. Ghosh told her his team had taken steps to find out if the detained Mr. Abdelrazik was a terrorist.
“‘We gave him the treatment,’” Ms. Jaffer said, quoting Mr. Ghosh.
“‘We did all kinds of ways to find out how, if he was a terrorist, and we are completely satisfied that he is not a terrorist, and your country has not laid any charges against him so it’s time to take him back,’” said the former senator, quoting Mr. Ghosh.
Ms. Jaffer was under no illusion about what references to “the treatment” meant. “He definitely was tortured,” she said. “I immediately knew that he did not have a pleasant experience.”
She said she would convey the message to Ottawa.
The former senator said Mr. Abdelrazik could not fly on commercial flights because of terrorism allegations against him. Mr. Ghosh suggested that perhaps Sudan’s commercial airline could fly Mr. Abdelrazik to Ottawa.
At the time, Aileen Carroll, who was Canada’s international co-operation minister, was in Sudan, travelling with a government plane, a Challenger jet.
Montreal man detained in Sudan gets day in court with lawsuit against Ottawa
Mr. Ghosh suggested the minister take Mr. Abdelrazik home. Ms. Jaffer told federal court she raised the idea with the minister, but her flight was full. “She was not willing to take Mr. Abdelrazik.”
The former senator said she was being careful about what matters in Sudan she became involved with because she had a limited role in matters related to the country.
She said she actually met Mr. Abdelrazik on a subsequent trip to Sudan in March, 2005. The two eventually had a conversation in the garden at Canada’s embassy in Sudan, and he was frustrated.
She said staff at the embassy were scolding her. “They were all telling me off, that, ‘This is terrible that you’re not taking him back,’” she said.
Referring to Mr. Abdelrazik in the court, the former senator said the man before her was not the man she saw in 2005.
“The man I saw was, extremely, a gaunt man. His eyes, ever since, haunted me because they were extremely scared, and he was literally pleading with me to get him out of there, and I didn’t do enough.”
