NOTE: this piece originally appeared as an editorial in the Chronicle Herald on June 8, 2021. Since then, I have contacted Nova Scotia MPs Andy Fillmore (Halifax), Geoff Regan (Halifax West) and Jaime Battiste (Sydney-Victoria), as well as the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Public Safety, and asked why no measures have been taken by any level of government. No response has been forthcoming from any. Herald journalist Aaron Beswick has asked the relevant police forces why INTERPOL Red Notices have not been obtained; again, no response.
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Nova Scotia’s numerous universities bring in a large number of international students every year (COVID notwithstanding). Generally speaking this is a good thing, since it keeps our province on the map as an international centre of excellent education; and, of course, international students pay substantially higher tuition fees than Canadian students, which is financially beneficial.
However, since 2007 a darker side to the cosmopolitanism of the student population has been experienced by several young Nova Scotian people. In each case, the person was sexually assaulted by an international student; in each case the student was arrested, released on bail and promptly fled the jurisdiction; and in each case, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the government of their home country helped them to, as the colloquial phrase has it, “jump bail.”
Perhaps more disturbingly, in each of these cases the Halifax and Sydney police and the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service appear to have made what efforts they could to address the situation, but the government of Canada—the only level of government with any power to address the international aspects—has remained essentially silent.
Criminal cases with transnational aspects are sometimes obscure, but each of these cases has seen substantial reporting. Coverage began in early 2019 when Antigonish-based Saltwire reporter Aaron Beswick reported on the case of Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi, a Saudi Arabian student at Cape Breton University who absconded from Canada to escape charges of sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement of a woman, as well as numerous motor vehicle offences. His bail had been posted by the Saudi embassy and it was reasonably clear that he had been assisted in escaping by Saudi officials. Subsequent research by Beswick and by Canadian Press report Michael Tutton turned up the similar 2006 case of Taher Ali Al-Saba, a Saudi student who jumped bail after sexually assaulting two children in Halifax. In January 2019 the Chronicle Herald reported on still another case, that of Chinese national Ertai Lu, a St. Mary’s University student who escaped Canada after being arrested for the sexual assault of a 19-year old Halifax woman.
It turned out, moreover, that Canada was not alone. Reporting by U.S. newspaper The Oregonian revealed that between 2012 and 2018 Saudi students (and other Saudi nationals) had jumped bail in at least 8 U.S. states. Many of these were sexual assault cases, though others involved murder, manslaughter and firearms offences. As in the Nova Scotia cases, there was evidence of varying strength in each case from which it could safely be inferred that the Saudi government assisted their nationals in escaping.
It is worthwhile to pause and note that, as anyone who has spent more than ten minutes studying international law would know, the behaviour of the Saudi government (and, in the case of Ertai Lu, China) is highly illegal. Countries have “sovereignty” over their territories, meaning that they have essentially exclusive jurisdiction to impose and, especially, to enforce laws. Any interference with a country’s legal process, on its territory, by a foreign government is viewed as an egregious breach of these norms. Governments tend to hold their criminal law processes to be particularly sacrosanct, because of the protective role that criminal justice is supposed to provide for citizens. Also, any foreign official who aids and abets a fugitive in this way is committing the offence of obstruction of justice, at the very least. Generally speaking, then, countries take an especially dim view of foreign intervention of any kind in criminal matters.
This is certainly the view of the U.S. Congress, which in 2019 passed a law requiring the FBI to declassify all information it had about whether Saudi Arabia had assisted its citizens in escaping justice. The intelligence bulletin released in response by the FBI confirmed that the Saudi government was “almost certainly” doing exactly this, and “undermining US judicial process” as a result. While the Trump administration was uninterested in addressing the issue, several senators have recently urged President Biden to “[take] action against the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] for their subversion of the rule of law.”
The Canadian response, however, has been mixed. When the Al-Saba case broke in 2007, Nova Scotia Crown Prosecutor Catherine Cogswell took the unusual step of commenting on the case in the media, noting the frustration of the victims’ families and calling on the federal government to introduce greater restrictions on bail for foreign nationals. Foreign Affairs, led at that time by Minister Peter MacKay, was reported to be “looking into it” but there is no evidence anything substantial was done. Later, reporting on the Alzoabi and Lu cases by Beswick noted that the Halifax police had managed to get INTERPOL “Red Notices” placed in hope of getting the men arrested by foreign states; but material released under Beswick’s Access to Information request to Global Affairs Canada indicated that officials were uninterested in pursuing the matter. There has been no public comment by the federal government since. My recent search of INTERPOL’s database turned up no indication that any of the men are currently listed as “wanted” for prosecution by Canada.
Why this weak response to serious breaches of Canadian sovereignty? Why no meaningful effort to obtain justice for Nova Scotian women and child victims of sexual assault, by a government that purports to take such issues so seriously? Certainly we know that Canada-Saudi relations have been fractious on the political front in recent years, stemming in part from then-Foreign Affair Minister Chrystia Freeland’s tweeted criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record in 2018. It is also impossible not to wonder what influence stems from the fact that Canada has a lucrative arms sales arrangement with the Saudi government.
None of these are good reasons for the nearly complete lack of interest the government of Canada has shown in the plight of these victims, left to try to recover from traumatic assaults with no meaningful chance of legal redress—to say nothing of our criminal justice system in this province, which has been abused by foreign governments that appear to think they are entitled to do so.
To be fair, I am not suggesting that there are any easy solutions here. Canada and Saudi Arabia do not have extradition relations, in no small part because Canadian courts would not permit anyone to be extradited to face the famously barbaric and unfair Saudi criminal justice system. This would not prevent Canada from simply asking Saudi Arabia to extradite Al-Saba and Alzoabi on a one-time basis, but the potential for a positive response is unlikely. Lu represents an even more difficult equation, as he appears to be a citizen of Hong Kong and the Canada-Hong Kong extradition treaty was recently suspended by the government of Canada over human rights concerns.
However, Canada could and should renew the apparently-expired INTERPOL notices, which would at least create the possibility that any of these men could be arrested if they travel to a country with which Canada does have an extradition treaty. Moreover, the government of Canada should at the very least issue a diplomatic protest with Saudi Arabia. While that would undoubtedly not be well-received, it might resonate more strongly if it was done in step with our American friends, who may be poised to do exactly this.
Canada has stated both domestically and internationally that victims of sexual assault deserve protection and justice. It should make good on this stance and try to help the Nova Scotian women and children who have been victimized by rogue foreigners. True justice might be elusive, but we should not lightly and silently tolerate impunity.
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