CSIS role in Abdelrazik case to be probed

A government watchdog will launch an investigation into the alleged role Canada's spy agency played in the case of a Montreal man who spent almost six years stranded in Sudan.

"We received a complaint from Mr. [Abousfian] Abdelrazik and we've accepted jurisdiction on that complaint," Steven Bittle, a senior adviser for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, confirmed on Thursday.

The committee's mandate is to review and investigate the operations of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and follow up on complaints.

The 47-year-old Sudanese-born man, who said he was tortured during the two times he was detained in Sudan, has also claimed that CSIS agents harassed his family for months before he went there.

He also said two CSIS agents came to Sudan in 2003 and interrogated him for two days and said no one would help him get back to Canada because he was a terrorist.

Abdelrazik was stranded for six years in Sudan, despite CSIS and the RCMP clearing him of terrorism allegations. But he had been on the United Nations no-fly list because of allegations he has ties to terrorism.

He returned to Canada last month after a judge ruled that the Harper government breached his constitutional rights. In his ruling, Federal Court Judge Russell Zinn also said that CSIS had been "complicit" in Abdelrazik's detention.

But the agency has denied that it played a role in Abdelrazik's arrest in Sudan.

In a letter to Gary Filmon, chair of SIRC in March this year, then CSIS director Jim Judd wrote the agency "does not, and has not, arranged for the arrest of Canadian citizens overseas and that, in this matter, CSIS employees have conducted themselves in accordance with the CSIS Act, Canadian law, and policy."

Judd asked the committee to investigate and report on actions of CSIS in the case of Abdelrazik to clarify the agency's role.