Dear Minister Lawrence Cannon :

I write in support of Abousfian Abdelrazik's constitutionally and internationally unchallengeable right to return to Canada.

I write also as a Canadian citizen whose conscience has been shocked by cascading revelations, in the courts and press of the U.S., the UK, and here at home, of the role played by Western governments, among them my own, in clear and extreme violations of international law, many of those violations rising to the level of war crimes.

Anyone with an internet account can discover in minutes that continuing American claims about Mr Abdelrazik rest on testimony from the Saudi Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, whose torture before and since has been attested to by the ICRC and the FBI. The most credible FBI witnesses have also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to their doubts about Abu Zubaydah's status with regard to al-Qaeda and about his mental capacity, even before he was tortured.

The UN Security Council's 1267 Committee have said that Mr Abdelrazik is free to fly home to Canada. We know that the only testimony against him is historically, tragically tainted.

I often wonder whether members of my own government or of the departments and agencies that act in the name of the sovereign citizens of Canada, all of us represented by our queen, and thus all of us more permanent than you, superior to you, have noticed the water rising about the ankles of American public servants, former and current, who seem to have grown up ignorant of the jurisprudence we inherited from Nuremberg 1945-46. Rationalizing war crimes itself becomes a crime, and I doubt that Canadians in time to come will judge anyone who committed such crimes in our name in kindly fashion.

Mr Abdelrazik has a paid airline reservation to return to Canada on 12 June, and an appointment with the Hon. Mr Justice Zinn on 7 July. I appeal to you to respect both Canadian and international law, and to end the bizarre melodrama of my government's inexplicably duplicitous dealings with another Canadian citizen.

Please just stand aside, and allow Mr Abdelrazik to fly home.

Yours sincerely,
Skdadl at POGGE
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A superb letter, isn't it?

Send yours to :

Lawrence Cannon
Telephone: (613) 992-5516.. Fax: (613) 992-6802
Email: CannoL@parl.gc.ca

because you can bet the Cons will mount some fetid embarrassing appeal of Justice Zinn's decision on the grounds that you don't give a shit what happens to other Canadian citizens.

First they came for some brown guy based on evidence obtained by waterboarding a schizophrenic half-wit 83 times, but I did not speak out because ...
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