Canada: Potato farmer’s release lies in Algeria, ex-diplomat says

A veteran Canadian diplomat says the best chance of getting New Brunswick farmer Henk Tepper out of a Lebanon prison is to deal directly with Algeria, the country that issued the arrest warrant in the first place. Gar Pardy, a now retired ambassador and longtime director of consular services, told the Toronto Star Thursday that if Algeria’s grievances over a bad shipment of potatoes are satisfied then his detention in Lebanon is unnecessary. “There is a deal that can be made here. I haven’t heard anything . . . about whether or not this side of the equation is being handled . . . if it occurs to me it should occur to some other people. But again you come back to whether or not there is any interest on the part of the PMO to be politically active on the case,” he told the Star. The office of the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy confirmed there has been contact with Algeria with respect to Tepper but no further details were available.

Tepper was on a trade mission to Lebanon last March with Potatoes Canada, an industry organization, when he was arrested on an Interpol warrant alleging he tampered with federal documents to sell potatoes to Algeria in 2007 that were unfit for human consumption. His more than nine months of being held in a Lebanon jail has caused a storm of controversy in Ottawa with critics calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to personally intervene. However, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has insisted that all diplomatic efforts are being made to bring Tepper back to Canada. The Star has obtained correspondence between Baird and Adnan Mansour, Lebanon’s minister of foreign affairs and emigrants, and a letter from Tepper thanking Hilary Childs-Adams, the Canadian ambassador to Lebanon, for dropping by at Christmas to see him. Pardy emphasized the importance of a letter from Harper, saying a request for release from the head of a country carries a great deal of weight, adding that it works out about half the time.

“Over the years it is a tool that has been used not only by ourselves but by many other governments around the world to break through a bit of a log jam,” Pardy said, noting that overture was certainly used in the now famous case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria — where he was tortured as a terrorist suspect. Toronto lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo, who was lead commission counsel to the Arar inquiry and is now advising Tepper’s New Brunswick lawyer James Mockler, said he fears the Teppers’ criticism of the government is in part responsible for the lack of movement in the case. “It’s an amazing lack of assertion on Canadian citizenship. They (the Conservative government) just let these guys linger on. If Canadians only knew what was going on,” Cavalluzzo said. Richard Belliveau, the retired Canadian ambassador to Algeria, shared Pardy’s take on things, adding that “it seems preposterous” that Tepper is being held in jail for months at a time on a questionable commercial transaction. Belliveau offered that “we’ve had very good relations in the area of food inspection with Algeria.” Questions to the Algerian Embassy in Ottawa went unanswered.

Source: thestar.com