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OTTAWA — A lawyer for Abousfian Abdelrazik accused the federal government of “serial hypocrisies” as closing arguments began on his client’s lawsuit over his prolonged detention in Sudan.
Lawyer Paul Champ argued during a Federal Court hearing Wednesday that federal officials contributed to the grave breaches of fundamental human rights that Abdelrazik suffered over a period of six years.
The Sudanese-born Abdelrazik settled in Montreal as a refugee and became a Canadian citizen in 1995.
During a 2003 visit to his native country to see his ailing mother, he was arrested, imprisoned and questioned about suspected extremist connections.
Abdelrazik, who denies involvement in terrorism, says he was tortured by Sudanese officials during two intervals of detention.
He is suing the Canadian government, claiming federal officials encouraged his detention by Sudanese authorities and actively obstructed his repatriation to Canada for several years.
“The Crown’s real goal throughout was to prevent him from returning to Montreal and exercising his constitutional right to enter Canada, to return to his country of citizenship,” Champ said.
The suit also names Lawrence Cannon, Conservative foreign affairs minister from October 2008 to May 2011.
Abdelrazik’s action was filed in 2009 but delays meant the civil trial began only last year.
Federal lawyers contend Canada neither caused nor contributed to any mistreatment Abdelrazik may have experienced.
On Wednesday, Champ walked the court through evidence and submissions presented during hearings last fall.
He said Abdelrazik was arbitrarily detained for nearly three years, spending time in some of the worst prisons in Khartoum.
“While in prison, he was beaten with rubber hoses, slapped, kicked, subject to cold and hot temperatures, shackled, burned and forced into stress positions for many days,” Champ said. “He also spent periods in solitary confinement.”
Upon release, he added, Abdelrazik “was still prevented from returning to Canada, suffering exile and separation from his home and his young children in Montreal for another three years.”
Canadian officials were instrumental in Abdelrazik’s ongoing detention in Sudan, Champ said.
“What mattered to them was that he not return to Canada,” he said.
Champ said Canadian officials knew, or ought to have known, that Abdelrazik was at risk while in the custody of Sudanese intelligence, which he called “a fearsome agency well-known for brutality and systematic torture.”
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency worked with a country with a weak rule of law and little respect for human rights in order to “neutralize or disrupt this Canadian citizen by simply keeping him far from North America,” Champ told the court.
When Abdelrazik’s arbitrary detention and imprisonment was no longer tenable, even for the Sudanese, Canada “contributed to or acquiesced in his placement” on no-fly lists that further frustrated his right to return to Canada, Champ added.
The federal government’s “serial hypocrisies” culminated in Cannon’s decision in 2009 to deny Abdelrazik an emergency passport, he said.
Government lawyers will have an opportunity to make their own closing arguments later this week.
In a written submission to the court, they say Canada did not cause Abdelrazik’s detention.
“Canada did not torture or otherwise mistreat him. He is a dual Sudanese-Canadian citizen, who was detained in Sudan by Sudanese authorities,” the submission says.
“Any mistreatment he endured was at the hands of the Sudanese. It was not requested, prompted or condoned in any way by Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2025.
Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press