The Canadian Trying to Come Home, if only Canada Will Let Him

In the coming weeks, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture will be discussing the story of Wassim Boughadou, a Canadian forced into exile by the refusal of the federal government to respect his right to come home by issuing him a travel document or passport. 

Mr. Boughadou’s case is the latest in a decades-long list of Canadian Muslims who have been deliberately abandoned by their government when they try to return home from abroad. In those cases, we have seen judicial inquiries document Canadian complicity in their mistreatment and exile, followed by government apologies and compensation for the state’s wrongdoing. Mr. Boughadou maintains that Canada has deliberately interfered with his Charter-guaranteed right to return home. 

The Turkish government on numerous occasions asked the Canadian embassy in Ankara to provide a passport or travel document so that Mr. Boughadou could be deported home, but Canada repeatedly refused to provide one, in violation of its own guidelines. 

 In February 2024 Canada arbitrarily closed a passport application for Mr. Boughadou that its own officials opened and facilitated. In spring 2024 the Canadian embassy in Ankara initiated and submitted an application for a travel document on his behalf, and in May 2024 a senior Canadian immigration official approved that travel document for him to return home. When the travel document was forwarded to Global Affairs Canada, it disappeared without explanation. When Mr. Boughadou was released from administrative detention in September 2024 (additional months behind bars which he had been forced to endure because of Canada’s repeated failures to respond to Turkish requests to assist in his deportation) and told to leave the country within 30 days, he traveled to the Canadian consulate in Istanbul to request his passport. He was refused, and only provided an identity document. He has been in limbo ever since. 

Stay tuned for further details on this injustice!