Posted on 11/06/2003 10:56:08 AM PST by Shermy
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government, under increasing pressure over allegations it ignores the plight of citizens jailed abroad, came under ferocious attack on Thursday from a businessman who said Ottawa had abandoned him when he was on death row in Saudi Arabia.
William Sampson savaged officials at both the Canadian foreign ministry and the embassy in Riyadh, saying they had made clear to him from the start that they considered he was guilty of setting off a bomb that killed a Briton.
"Throughout my incarceration I consider the activities of the embassy officials fell well short of anything that could be considered supportive. Their behavior and treatment of my family...was thoroughly inadequate," he told Parliament's foreign affairs committee.
"I was fighting alone in solitary confinement because of the behavior of your officials," he said, calling for a public inquiry into the way his case had been handled.
Sampson -- who said Canada should have taken a much tougher line with Riyadh -- spent more than two years in a Saudi jail facing a death sentence for murder before being released in August this year. He said he had been regularly tortured.
His comments come at a bad time for Ottawa, which is struggling to contain the fallout from the case of another man, Maher Arar, who said he was regularly tortured after being deported to Syria by U.S. agents last year.
Critics are demanding a public inquiry into allegations that Canadian and U.S. officials conspired to have Arar illegally deported to Syria so he could be tortured there.
In the cases of both Arar and Sampson, Canadian officials consistently brushed off calls from opposition legislators to crack down on Saudi Arabia and Syria by imposing sanctions or expelling their ambassadors.
Ottawa said it preferred to work behind the scenes and engage in so-called soft diplomacy -- an approach Sampson said had failed. He also accused Canada of playing down his case because it was afraid of offending the Saudis.
"Because of the political clout that supposedly Saudi Arabia has, people were actually hiding behind the soft power argument to do nothing," said Sampson, making his first visit to Canada since his release.
Sampson's account was challenged by Aileen Carroll, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, who said in fact Ottawa had taken "every conceivable effort in every possible diplomatic venue" to secure his release.
Sampson retorted: "Before you even managed to aggravate them I was sentenced to death, madam, and awaiting my death...your bringing things out hard and publicly would not have exacerbated my position in the least."
Saudi authorities blamed the bombing on a turf war over illegal alcohol sales. Families of those jailed with Sampson said local Islamic militants were responsible.
Sampson also said the Canadian foreign ministry had broken an agreement to pay all his bills for medical treatment to repair the physical and mental injuries he suffered.
That's because the Canadian government has the broadcast media by the shorts regulation-wise, and most of the big newspaper companies are also involved in broadcasting.
A reporter foir the Ottawa Citizen tried to write about the story but was slapped down by the Aspers, who were concerned about what Chretien would do to their broadcast operation.
I think Mark Steyn wrote about this.
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