Canadian citizens travelling or working abroad have a certain expectation that should they be detained, harmed, imprisoned, or have their rights otherwise compromised in a foreign country, the Canadian Embassy in that nation will step in. Not necessarily so.
William Sampson’s memoir Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison details not only his two-year ordeal but the apparent indifference of the Canadian government to his imprisonment.
Then there is the current case of Huseyin Celil being held by the Chinese government which accuses him of being a terrorist.
Another horrific example is photographer Zahra Ziba Kaemi, who was captured, tortured, raped and killed in an Iranian prison. Maclean’s magazine recently published an article exposing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ pathetic handling of her case.
