(Sun Dec 18 2011, Toronto Star)--Maintaining that Canadian aid is supporting repression in Ethiopia, human rights lawyer Lorne Waldman has filed an application in Federal Court to block it. In his application, he is asking that the Canadian government be prohibited from contributing any more development dollars to the African nation to Ethiopia, through the World Bank or the United Nations Development Program.
The application is a last-ditch effort to win the freedom of Bashir Makhtal, a Canadian sentenced in 2009 to life in prison in Ethiopia, the third largest recipient of Canadian official development assistance. In 2009-2010 Canada provided $168.54 million in development and humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, according to the Canadian International Development Agency’s own reports.
The request for the prohibition of further aid comes on the heels of repeated efforts to win the freedom of Makhtal, a Toronto man who was rendered illegally from Kenya to Ethiopia in January, 2007, kept in prison without access to a lawyer or Canadian consular officials for 18 months, then sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges.
Makhtal, a former Toronto businessman, had returned to Africa in 2002 to run a used clothing business out of Djibouti, a tiny country between Ethiopia and Somalia on the Horn of Africa. He has been in prison since Dec. 30, 2006, when he was stopped at the Somalia-Kenya border.
The suit states Makhtal “was wrongly accused by the Ethiopian government and was found guilty of being a member of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an organization seeking independence from Ethiopia of the oil-rich Ogaden region.” Read more from Toronto Star »
The application is a last-ditch effort to win the freedom of Bashir Makhtal, a Canadian sentenced in 2009 to life in prison in Ethiopia, the third largest recipient of Canadian official development assistance. In 2009-2010 Canada provided $168.54 million in development and humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, according to the Canadian International Development Agency’s own reports.
The request for the prohibition of further aid comes on the heels of repeated efforts to win the freedom of Makhtal, a Toronto man who was rendered illegally from Kenya to Ethiopia in January, 2007, kept in prison without access to a lawyer or Canadian consular officials for 18 months, then sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges.
Makhtal, a former Toronto businessman, had returned to Africa in 2002 to run a used clothing business out of Djibouti, a tiny country between Ethiopia and Somalia on the Horn of Africa. He has been in prison since Dec. 30, 2006, when he was stopped at the Somalia-Kenya border.
The suit states Makhtal “was wrongly accused by the Ethiopian government and was found guilty of being a member of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an organization seeking independence from Ethiopia of the oil-rich Ogaden region.” Read more from Toronto Star »
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