Canada's former peace envoy to Sudan says she believes Canadian was 'tortured badly' in custody

A former senator and peace envoy to Sudan says she believes — based on her dealings with the northeast African country's notorious former spy chief — that Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian who was detained in Sudan for years, was "tortured badly" while in custody there.

Mobina Jaffer, who retired from the Senate in August after 23 years, testified Monday morning in a court hearing on Abdelrazik's lawsuit. She told the court she believes the federal government was complicit in his detention and torture abroad.

Abdelrazik, who was born in Sudan and became a Canadian citizen in 1995, was arrested in Sudan during a 2003 trip and interrogated while in custody by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officials about suspected extremist links. The Montreal-based father has denied any involvement with terrorism.

Abdelrazik spent the following six years in prison or in forced exile at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum as his attempts to return to Canada were rejected by the federal government.

Jaffer told an Ottawa courtroom Monday about her time as Canada's special envoy for peace in Sudan from 2002 to 2006, a job that sometimes took her to the war-torn country multiple times a year.

Jaffer said she would meet to report her movements with Gen. Salah Gosh, then the director of Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service.

She said Gosh — whom the U.S. has since sanctioned for threatening "the peace, security, or stability of Sudan" — told her about giving Abdelrazik "the treatment" during a meeting in 2004.

"Mr. Gosh was frustrated. He felt that Canadian officials had asked him to detain Abdelrazik. He had detained him. Then there were no charges. And so he said to me, 'Why are you not taking him back?'" Jaffer testified.

Abdelrazik was on a no-fly list at the time, meaning commercial airlines would not accept him as a passenger. 

"[Gosh] said to me that, 'Your country thought he was a terrorist and they wanted me to find out if he was a terrorist.' And then he said, 'You know, finding out [who is] a terrorist is not pleasant in Sudan and we gave him the treatment,'" said Jaffer.

She said Gosh told her that Sudan "did all kinds of ways to find out how, how, if he was a terrorist." She said he reported he was "completely satisfied" that Abdelrazik was not a terrorist and it was "time you took him back."

Abdelrazik's lawyer Paul Champ asked Jaffer if she understood what Gosh meant when he said they were trying to find out if his client was a terrorist.

"He definitely was tortured badly," said Jaffer.

"When they're trying to get you to admit that you are a terrorist or something like that, it's also extra worse treatment."