A former senior agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency has alleged a Montreal man suing the federal government for abandoning him to torture and confinement in Sudan was a participant in terrorism and adviser to a notorious terrorist.
Testifying in Federal Court on Thursday, the CSIS witness, identified only as “T,” summed up CSIS concerns about Abousfian Abdelrazik in an exchange with Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer.
The witness alleged that Mr. Abdelrazik, 62, attended terrorist training camps, went to the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya and participated in conflict there.
Speaking in French, the witness said that Mr. Abdelrazik came back from Chechnya with “important sums of money,” but he did not elaborate.
Also the witness, who held various posts including being counterterrorism director-general for the service, alleged that Mr. Abdelrazik encouraged Ahmed Ressam, an acquaintance of Mr. Abdelrazik’s in Montreal, to go to the same training camps he attended.
Mr. Ressam was found guilty of planning to blow up the Los Angeles airport after his 1999 arrest in Seattle in a car filled with explosives.
Summing up his views, the witness, referring to long-standing CSIS interest in Mr. Abdelrazik, said: “These activities led us to believe that, indeed, he was a person involved in jihadist extremism.”
Pressed by Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer on whether the evidence behind the allegations would be admissible in court, the witness replied, “I am not a lawyer, a jurist, so I can’t state the admissibility of the information that was provided to us.”
He later noted that the service collects data and information, not evidence.
Paul Champ, Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer, asked whether the witness was ever in Chechnya to see Mr. Abdelrazik there, but a federal lawyer objected to the question.
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.
He is accusing the defendants of abandoning him in Sudan for six years – from 2003 to 2009 – which he says included detention and torture by Sudan’s intelligence agency over suspected links to terrorism….
