Monday, October 11, 2010
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Minneapolis lawyer Peter Erlinder said his client, Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, 37, was allowed to enter Canada after being deported from the United States last Friday.
Warsame, a Canadian citizen, previously lived in Toronto and may want to resume his life in the city or elsewhere in Canada, Erlinder said in a telephone interview.
Warsame was deported to Canada in a deal with U.S. authorities in which he was released from solitary confinement in exchange for pleading guilty to providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
The defence sounded out Canadian officials while the deal was being negotiated, Erlinder said. "We wouldn't have agreed to the plea agreement had the Canadian authorities indicated at all that they were interested in him as a threat to national security or as a criminal," he said.
"It is important for the Canadians to know that he was handed directly from U.S. immigration authorities to Canadian immigration authorities. And everyone knew he was coming -- this was no secret."
"He is a free person in Canada," Erlinder said.
The lawyer said Warsame's imprisonment was brought on by U.S. laws that had been "manipulated" in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, organized by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.
Warsame travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 -- before the 9-11 attacks -- when the Taliban were the government there. Erlinder said Warsame was "a religious man but not a fanatic -- he was looking for enlightenment."
He returned to Toronto in early 2001. His wife, a U.S. citizen, was living in Minneapolis with their two children. She applied for a green card for him to move to the United States.
They lived in a cramped apartment, with him being a student at a local college and holding down a job.
Erlinder said Warsame's name apparently came up during the interrogation of an unidentified person at Guantanamo Bay.
Four men came to the apartment in December 2003 and took him to a Minnesota military base. "They got into the car and that was the last he saw of the outside world until last Friday," Erlinder said.
He said Warsame was first questioned without a lawyer or any warnings at a U.S. military base in Minnesota, before he was formally arrested on the charge and kept in solitary confinement while awaiting trial.
U.S. prosecutors say Warsame is a jihadist who received military training in al Qaeda camps, dined with bin Laden and went to the Taliban's front line. Warsame's lawyers depicted him as a bumbling idealist seeking a utopian society. Erlinder said Warsame and some 75 other people were at the dinner attended by bin Laden.
Warsame pleaded guilty in May 2009 to conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization. He was sentenced in July 2009 to seven years and eight months in prison, but was given credit for time served and good behaviour.
As part of the plea agreement, Warsame agreed to be deported to Canada.
Canadian officials refused to say whether or not Warsame was in custody last Friday after U.S. immigration authorities said he been had been taken to the border.
When given a list of questions including whether Warsame would be monitored in Canada, David Charbonneau, a spokesman with Public Safety Canada, said he could not comment.
He said everyone entering the country, including citizens, is examined by Canadian border authorities.
With files from The Associated Press