OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada said Thursday it will comply with a court order to bring home one of its citizens stranded in Sudan over his alleged ties to Al-Qaeda.

Abousfian Abdelrazik has been holed up inside Canada’s embassy in Khartoum since April 2008, fearing arrest by local authorities.

He has been unable to return home to Canada as Ottawa refused to issue him an emergency passport and his name appears on a United Nations no-fly list.

Earlier this month, a federal court ruled this violated his rights, and ordered Ottawa to provide him with travel documents and, within 30 days, arrange to fly him from Khartoum to Montreal to be reunited with his family.

“The government will comply with the court order,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced on Thursday in the House of Commons, but offered no details.

Under the terms of the court ruling, the government was obliged to inform Abdelrazik’s lawyers of its travel plans for him by Friday. It had another two weeks, however, to decide if it would appeal the court decision.

Abdelrazik’s lawyer Khalid Elgazzar told public broadcaster CBC his client was “very happy” about his expected repatriation when he was informed by telephone. “He had trouble containing his enthusiasm,” Elgazzar said.

Abdelrazik had arrived in Canada in 1990 as a refugee, after fleeing his native Sudan over his opposition to President Omar al-Beshir. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1995.

In 2006, he was accused of links to Abu Zubaydah, a lieutenant of Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Canada’s federal police and spy service also examined his alleged ties to Ahmed Ressam, an Al-Qaeda operative jailed for trying to bomb Los Angeles airport in 1999. The two had met at a mosque in Montreal, where Abdelrazik lived for 13 years.

But Abdelrazik has never been charged, and he denies any involvement in terrorism.

His exile from Canada began in March 2003 when he traveled to Sudan in order to visit his ailing mother and, he says, to escape harassment by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

During his stay, he was twice detained in Sudan and says he was tortured. His Canadian passport expired during his two prison stints and upon his release he found himself on a UN no-fly list.

Fearing arrest by Sudanese authorities, he sought and was granted safe haven at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum in April 2008.

He has since accused Ottawa — which alternately agreed and refused to provide him with a new passport — of “procrastination, evasiveness, obfuscation and general bad faith” for scuttling his eight attempts to fly home since 2004, said court documents.

Ottawa had said its hands were tied because the United Nations has listed him as an associate of Al-Qaeda, making him subject to a global asset freeze and a travel ban.

Courtesy of : http://ca.news.yahoo.com