Challenging Unfair Consequences of Anti-Terror Laws

The fight against terrorist organizations and their agendas is a serious one that implicates important matters of national and public safety security. One of the ways that this fight is waged is through identifying individuals on international and domestic watch lists who are then subject to travel bans, thus limiting their opportunity to carry out their plans. Problems may arise however when individuals are placed onto such watch lists even though they are not terrorists. Individuals wrongfully placed on such lists are thus subjected to restraints on their mobility and their liberty.

This problem is not academic. Individuals like Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik, an individual who was placed on a UN terror watch list and subjected to a travel ban (as part of a UN Sanctions regime) is stranded in Sudan awaiting a chance to return to his wife and family in Canada. Notably, according to a recent Globe and Mail article, the Canadian and Sudanese governments have both deemed Abdelrazik not to be a terrorist suspect after years of interrogation, incarceration and torture. Furthermore, notwithstanding the travel ban, Security Council Resolution 1822, adopted on June 30, 2008 states that all nations shall: "[p]revent the entry into or transit through their territories of these individuals, provided that nothing in this paragraph shall oblige any State to deny entry or require the departure from its territories of its own nationals..." (emphasis added).

Further to its findings that Abdelrazik is not a terrorist, the Canadian government has apparently been willing to issue travel documents to Abdelrazik to return to Canada. Here's the rub, he did not have the funds to pay for his trip back home after being incarcerated in Sudan for an extended period. In order to help him return, numerous individuals in Canada have generously donated money to pay for a plane ticket, this includes a former Solicitor-General of Canada. The problem? According to the Globe article, Federal anti-terrorism laws provide punishment of up to 10 years in prison for anyone providing financial assistance to someone on a UN terror watch list. It further states that the government has threatened prosecution of those who provide financial assistance in order for Abdelrazik to purchase a plane ticket home.

So what happens, (going by the government's threats of prosecution) is that a whole host of people have defied Canadian federal law by advancing money to someone on an international terror watch list to return home; someone who the Government of Canada doesn't even deem to be a terrorist. What becomes interesting here, from the point of view of the state legitimizing or undermining resistance is that if the government of Canada decides to prosecute these numerous individuals, it clearly commits to the latter even though doing so undermines its own findings about Abdelrazik not being a terrorist (and ignores the fact that the UN terror watch list does not prevent the government from allowing one of its nationals to return home). However, if the government decides not to prosecute (and again this is under the assumption that the exception stated above doesn't apply or is irrelevant somehow to the prosecution of the federal law in question), it then legitimizes the resistance of those who provided money to Abdelrazik and who question the legitimacy of the UN terror watch list with respect to Abdelrazik specifically.

Sources consulted:

Les Perreaux and Bill Curry, "Activists defy law to buy plane ticket for exiled Canadian" Globe and Mail, March 12, 2009.

United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee website.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1822 (2008)