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Looks like there's another Canuck in Chechnya
The mystery surrounding the reported death last week of a Canadian in warn-torn Chechyna deepened today with word that another B.C. man with him apparently is missing. A Foreign Affairs spokesman confirmed the department has been asked to look into the second man's whereabouts. "The information has been brought to our attention and the Canadian embassy in Moscow has been instructed to run the information by the relevant Russian authorities," Reynald Doiron said from Ottawa. News reports have identified the man as Kamal Elbahja of suburban Maple Ridge. He was reportedly travelling with Rudwan Khalil Abubaker of Vancouver, whom Russian authorities said last today was killed in strife-torn Chechnya.| That's a heck of a wrong turn from Kamloops. |
Russian officials said the man they identified as Rudwan Khalil was killed along with three gunmen by special forces in a mountainous region of the southern republic. A Russian television report included video of a Canadian passport and B.C. driver's licence in the name of Rudwan Khalil. Foreign Affairs had no explanation for the discrepancy in the names.| Duh. Abubaker is his "Lion of Islam (TM)" nom de mujahid. But why should the vaunted Cdn Department of Foreign Affairs be expected to know that? |
But lawyer Phil Rankin, representing Abubaker's family, said it may have originated in documents when Abubaker and his older siblings came to Canada as refugees in the 1980s. Rankin has been hired to help the family retrieve Abubaker's body from Chechnya. "They would like to see if he's dead or not," Rankin said in an interview. "They're not sure because they've never seen the picture of his body."| Insert your own Monty Python joke ---> Here. |
Doiron said Russian authorities have not yet confirmed Abubaker's identity or provided details on how he died.Russian officials claimed the man they called Khalil was an explosives expert working with militant insurgents fighting to split Chechnya from the Russian federation. A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Ottawa said today he had no new information about the case. Rankin said Abubaker's family reported he and Elbahja went to Dubai for a holiday and visited Abubaker's father in Saudi Arabia.| Soddy Arabia, you say? Hmmmmmmm...yes, it's all very mysterious. |
The family got a call from a cousin in Dubai in late August saying he and Elbahja had decided to go to Azerbaijan, which borders on Chechnya, to attend the wedding of friend Azar Tagiev. The trip would have required travelling to Russia to get a connecting flight to Baku, capital of the former Soviet republic. | Azerbaijani weddings usually require a pit stop for automatic weapons and ammo too... |
Tagiev, 31, was an immigrant to Canada living in the Vancouver area before returning to his homeland last May, according to his former boss. "This was a man that decided to go and immerse himself in religion," said Percy von Lipinski, president of Visa Connection Ltd., which helps travellers to arrange visas to many foreign countries.| Gotta love a name like Percy von Lipinski. |
Abubaker, 26, was born in the Sudanese city of Kassala but grew up in Vancouver. He completed a computer software program at Vancouver Community College but worked as a salesman in a clothing store and as a sometime model and movie extra. A spokeswoman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would not comment on the family's report they were visited by CSIS agents last Saturday.| Born in Sudan, studying computers in Canada, friends with employees of Percy the visa fixer, father in Soddiland, found dead in Chechnya. A quiet boy, kept to himself. |
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-10-18 |
