Bearing the Scars of Canadian Intelligence
By David Parker
One hundred and sixteen Canadians broke federal law to purchase a plane ticket for Abousfian Abdelrazik’s return to Canada, despite UN regulation 1267, which makes it an offence to donate or give any financial aid to a person on the no-fly list. Photo: Rick Cardella
HALIFAX – Abousfian Abdelrazik toured Canada this fall after six long years spent in forced exile in Sudan where he was detained and tortured. He has returned to Canada, despite the efforts of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), or as Abdelrazik calls them, the Canadian Muhkabarat. Mukhabarat is an Arabic word meaning ‘intelligence’, and refers to state security intelligence agencies known for their brutality, torture, arbitrary detentions and human rights violations.
He related his story of the Canadian Muhkabarat at a public presentation in Halifax in September.
“Between 1997 and 2003, [CSIS] started to follow me everywhere. They started bothering my [sick] wife, they even went to her family and to her father at work. ‘Give us information about your husband, and we will give you better treatment for your cancer,’ they said.”
In 2003, On the eve of his departure from Canada to Sudan to see his mother who had fallen ill, Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen who had never been charged with a crime, had an encounter with CSIS in Montreal.
“Two days before leaving for Sudan, two agents from CSIS came to my apartment and asked me about my travel. One of them said, ‘We know you’re planning on going to your country, Sudan.’ I went back inside and called the police. The police arrived in the parking lot, and asked the CSIS agents to leave. While they walked away, one of them turned to me and said to me, ‘You’re going to Sudan, you will see.’”
While in Sudan in September of 2003, he was detained by Sudanese state security and initially held in prison in Khartoum. In Sudan, where he was being interrogated and tortured, the same CSIS agents visited him.
“One evening, the same men who arrested me, came and took me. They said ‘Your friends, the Canadian Mukhabarat, have come to talk to you.’ They brought me to the office, where I found the same two guys who visited me my last night in Montreal, sitting at a table, with nice drinks, cakes, and coffee. One of them, the one who turned to me in Montreal and said ‘you’re gonna see’, said to me, ‘Remember what I said to you in Montreal? Now you’re going to see! Sit down!’ And they interrogated me for two days.”
“He said to me ‘You’re not Canadian, you’re Sudanese. You’re going to stay forever in Sudan, my country doesn’t need you!’” said Abdelrazik, relating some of the verbal harassment.