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Tripoli, 24 August:
Three of five Libyan diplomats ordered out of Canada in May last year, after being declared “persona non grata”, have since claimed asylum in the country.
The Canadian broadcaster CBC News uncovered the surprising development, thanks to a formal freedom of information request, for sight of records from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).
The three Qaddafi diplomats, who are so far unidentified, were ordered to leave the Ottawa embassy, along with two colleagues, reportedly because they were accused of trying to intimidate students and other Libyans living in Canada, who had joined protests against the regime.
A press release issued by the DFAIT at the time of the expulsion of the five diplomats said: “The activities carried out in Canada by the five Libyan diplomats are considered inappropriate and inconsistent with normal diplomatic functions.”.
CBC News was unable to establish if the three diplomats in fact left Canada as ordered, and have since returned there. It discovered however that the trio were requesting asylum because they claimed they would not be safe if they returned to Libya.
The broadcaster reported that Canadian asylum applications might take as long as four and a half years to be processed and in extreme cases, could run to ten years. The Canadian government is currently moving legislation to speed up the process.
It was not possible this evening to contact the foreign ministry here in Tripoli to see if they could identify the former diplomats and say if they had families living with them in Ottawa at the time of their expulsion. [/restrict]
