MONTREAL - Wafa Sahnine wishes Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his foreign affairs minister could, for a moment, step into her family's shoes.
For the last six years, the 25-year-old Montreal woman has put her life on hold to raise her now 15-year-old stepsister after her mother died of cancer and her stepfather Abousfian Abdelrazik became stranded in Sudan during a visit to his ill mother.
Tortured in a Sudanese prison based on unfounded terror allegations, the 47-year-old was released after the RCMP and CSIS cleared him of any wrongdoing but the Canadian government still refuses to issue him a passport so he can return home.
"I would really like them to put themselves in my stepfather's place," she told The Canadian Press during a rare interview at the small apartment where she raises Jioyria Abdelrazik.
"That they be exiled in another country, that they be tortured and that while thinking of their children who are at the other end of the world, that they feel the stress and anguish.
"I would really like them to put themselves in our place. That they reflect for a moment. That they stop playing with our lives. It's not a game."
April 28 will mark one year since Abdelrazik first sought refuge at the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum and comes little more than three weeks after his dream of reuniting with his children was dashed when he was forced to miss a flight home paid for by his supporters.
Despite assertions from Ottawa that travel documents would be issued so long as Abdelrazik had a ticket, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon changed his tune a week before his flight, saying Abdelrazik would now have to get his name off a UN no-fly list before he could travel.
It's an argument Abdelrazik's lawyers can't understand since the UN also allows nations to repatriate their citizens.
"It was an unimaginable disappointment," Sahnine said of Cannon's about-face. "You wait, you wait, you wait, you hope, you wish and at the end it explodes in your face without any explanation."
She finds it hard to believe the government would allow somebody who's considered a threat to national security to live in an embassy.
While Sahnine has never spoken directly with any government officials and admits most discussions take place between lawyers, if she could speak with Harper or Cannon personally, her message would be simple.
"I would say just bring my father back right now," she said. "There's nothing to tell them except that they've made a mistake.
"Accept that you've made a mistake. Accept it and bring him home."
Just nine years old when her mother married again, Sahnine said it was Abdelrazik who raised her and whose values she now looks to when raising Jioyria.
While Jioyria's memories of her father are fading because she was so young when he left, Sahnine remembers him as a kind and patient man who would play hide-and-seek with her in the house and climb trees and ride bikes with her outdoors.
She is now lucky to speak with him by telephone twice a week but that is only when embassy officials allow him.
She is afraid to discuss her own difficulties with him as his health is deteriorating. Earlier this year he fell ill and may even have suffered a stroke or heart attack but was too afraid to go to the hospital for treatment.
Noting her stepfather had met another woman after her mother's death and that the two had a son, Sahnine said his absence has made it difficult for the siblings to remain close.
"We'd all like to reunite and say this is ancient history and start to move on with our lives," she said, adding she fears the government is simply waiting for him to die before they finally bring him home.
"Stop playing with the life of my stepfather and stop playing with our lives."
Abdelrazik's lawyers return to Federal Court next month to argue that Sec. 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- the right of a citizen to enter Canada -- has been breached and that he should be flown home by whatever means are necessary.
His lawyer, Audrey Brousseau, said she looks forward to seeing the government's factum outlining Ottawa's position on the case.
It's due to be disclosed on Friday and will, for the first time, elaborate on why the government has refused Abdelrazik a passport even though his name has been cleared.
Last week the government simply cited a section of the Canadian Passport Order that allows the foreign affairs minister to "refuse or revoke a passport if the minister is of the opinion that such action is necessary for the national security of Canada or another country."
Earlier motions suggest the government might focus on the fact that transferring Abdelrazik through another country's airspace is a violation of the UN resolution but Brousseau said if that's the extent of the argument, it makes no sense.
"We know other people listed on the 1267 list have travelled from one country to another," she said.
"If they're going forward with that argument, I think it's very weak. I hope they have some more interesting stuff to give us."
