By Louisa Taylor
The Ottawa Citizen
The cousin of a Canadian being held in an Ethiopian jail says an official from the Department of Foreign Affairs urged him yesterday to keep the case “low-key” because Canada is doing its best behind the scenes to help Bashir Makhtal.
However, following the Iacobucci report on the role of Canadian officials in the torture of three Canadians in Syria, Said Maktal said he no longer trusted what the government was telling him.
“I’m a polite person, I’ve been patient and I’ve had a lot of respect for our government,” said Mr. Maktal, whose cousin has been in an Addis Ababa prison since January 2007. “They keep saying, ‘We’re doing our best.’ But now, reading what our government did to our citizens, that gives me more doubt about what’s really going on.
“I’m not going to be low-key anymore.”
Bashir Makhtal is ethnically Somali, born in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. He came to Canada as a refugee and became a citizen in 1994. After training as a computer programmer, he worked for a Toronto bank. In 2001, he left for the Horn of Africa region to start a business trading used clothes in Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya.
Mr. Makhtal was in Mogadishu when Ethiopia invaded in late 2006, and he joined thousands of others in fleeing to Kenya to avoid the fighting. He and dozens of other foreign nationals were arrested at the border by Kenyan police, held in a Nairobi prison and eventually flown illegally to Ethiopia, where they were imprisoned.
According to Human Rights Watch, many of them were interrogated by FBI and CIA agents. There have been reports of beatings and torture by Ethiopian officials, and Bashir Makhtal has been held in solitary confinement since at least the summer of 2007.
Ethiopia at first denied Mr. Makhtal was in its custody, but finally admitted holding him in April 2007. It has variously accused the Canadian of being a financier for the Islamic Courts, a fundamentalist group in Somalia, or a liberation fighter for the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which was founded by his grandfather. The Ethiopians consider the ONLF a terrorist organization, while Canada does not.
No evidence has been presented for either charge, nor has Mr. Makhtal been allowed to see a lawyer throughout his 22-month incarceration. Canadian diplomats were allowed to visit him for the first time in July, but Ethiopian authorities have denied all subsequent requests for consular visits.
Human Rights Watch says Mr. Makhtal and a Kenyan national are the only remaining foreigners from the 2007 renditions known to be detained, though 22 others are not accounted for. The governments of 16 other countries secured the release of their citizens, some within weeks of the arrest in Kenya.
“The people at Foreign Affairs, they’re sitting in their offices, doing their paperwork and everything has a procedure,” said Said Maktal, who spells his name differently from his cousin. “But we’re dealing with a country that does not obey international law. What we’re doing is not enough.”
Mr. Maktal says his sources in Ethiopia tell him that Bashir was taken before a military court twice this week and pressured to sign a false confession of terrorist activities. He refused. Bashir managed to send a message through intermediaries, telling Mr. Maktal that the prison was “another world” and that diplomatic efforts at the level of junior officials wouldn’t get him released, or even a fair trial.
“What has to happen is the prime minister has to get involved personally,” Mr. Maktal said. “This is between countries. (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper should pick up the phone.”
Foreign Affairs spokesman Daniel Barbarie was unable to comment on the “low-key” comment by the end of the day yesterday. However, he did say that Canadian officials had made numerous high-level representations to the Ethiopian authorities, including two visits to Ethiopia by Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs. The result was one consular visit on July 18, more than 18 months after Mr. Makhtal’s arrest.
“Canadian officials were able to verify Mr Makhtal’s well-being during this visit,” Mr. Barbarie said. “Canadian officials continue to actively engage senior Ethiopian authorities on the issues of ongoing consular access, due process and respect for Mr. Makhtal’s rights.”
Pointing to Bashir’s case and those of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, Mr. Maktal said the common denominator was that “they’re all Canadians from somewhere else.”
“Are we not important enough, or Canadian enough? I’d like to know: Are there two classes of citizenship in this country?”