Ethiopia visit a 'big step' in Bashir Makhtal case

Mr. Baird met with Mr. Makhtal in a prison about 40 minutes outside Addis Ababa.

“He was healthy, he has gained some weight. He is in relatively good spirits given the circumstances,” Mr. Baird said in a telephone interview Thursday morning.

The Transport Minister also met with Ethiopian officials, in particular the Ethiopian Foreign Minister, and urged that Mr. Makhtal be deported on condition that he not return to the region.

Mr. Baird stressed that Canada and Ethiopia have good relations and that “this had become an irritant on both our sides.” He added that Ethiopia truly believes Mr. Makhtal is guilty of terror-related offences.

The Ethiopian minister suggested some sort of transfer in which Mr. Makhtal would serve out the remainder of his sentence in a Canadian prison. That is problematic, Mr. Baird said, because Canada does not have a transfer agreement with Ethiopia and believes Mr. Makhtal is innocent.

So, although different options were discussed, there was no immediate resolution to the situation. “It was a big step forward,” Mr. Baird said. “But by no means are we there yet.”

Mr. Makhtal has spent three years in Ethiopian jails on terrorism charges but his family says he is really being punished because grandfather was one of the founders of the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Canadian officials have for months pressed their Ethiopian counterparts to release Mr. Makhtal, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon raised the case with Ethiopian officials when he was in Addis Ababa from Jan. 29 to 31 for the African Union summit.

But Mr. Baird's trip was the first time a Canadian minister had travelled there expressly to visit Mr. Makhtal and lobby for his release – a step that increases diplomatic pressure.

The Transport Minister became involved in the case because he was lobbied through the large Somali-Canadian community in his Ottawa riding.

Mr. Makhtal, a former Toronto resident, is an ethnic Somali who was born in Eastern Ethiopia but raised in Somalia from the age of 11 until he came to Canada in 1991 as a refugee. He has been a Canadian citizen since 1994.

In 2002, he returned to Africa to start a business selling used clothes. In December 2006, he returned to Somalia on a visit, but Ethiopian troops entered the country, and he was arrested as he fled to the Kenyan border.

His family says he has never had any involvement in separatist rebel groups, and insists that Ethiopia's government has convicted him because his grandfather was a founder of the ONLF. “They did all this damage because it's the Makhtal family,” the Canadian’s cousin said.