Nope. Stephen Harper’s Administration Is Not A “Bushie”

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Senior Canadian intelligence officials warned against allowing Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, to return home from Sudan because it could upset the Bush administration, classified documents reveal.

“Senior government of Canada officials should be mindful of the potential reaction of our U.S. counterparts to Abdelrazik’s return to Canada as he is on the U.S. no-fly list,” intelligence officials say in documents in the possession of The Globe and Mail.

“Continued co-operation between Canada and the U.S. in the matters of security is essential. We will need to continue to work closely on issues related to the Security of North America, including the case of Mr. Abdelrazik,” the document says.

The documents, dated April 30, 2008, and marked “Secret – Canadian eyes only” also designate Mr. Abdelrazik, a citizen who has never been charged with a crime, as “involved in Islamic extremist activities.”

Mr. Abdelrazik was imprisoned in Sudan while visiting his ailing mother in 2003, apparently because Canadian counterterrorist agents asked the Sudanese secret police to pick him up.

The Abdelrazik documents – prepared by senior intelligence and security officials in Transport Canada, the unit that creates and maintains Canada’s own version of the terrorist “no-fly” list – make clear that it was the U.S. list that kept Mr. Abdelrazik from returning to Canada when he was released from prison three years ago.

That appears to contradict the explanation by former foreign minister Maxime Bernier who told the House of Commons that “Mr. Abdelrazik is currently not able to return to Canada on his own because he is on the United Nations’ list of suspected terrorists.

What is about the current US administration that gives Stephen Harper a boner? I just don’t understand the logic. I mean, fine, argue about the Canadian citizen locked up in Gitmo as he was caught in a battlefield. But Abdelrazik is a citizen trapped in a third world country. For the love of god, get him here and the proceed with the legal course. Or maybe the legal course in Harper’s books is “lock him up and throw away the key”. Who knows. Let’s get the election started already.