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Canadian senator sent ‘inauthentic’ documents to fleeing Afghan family
Marilou McPhedran, a Canadian senator, and one of her staff members sent inauthentic travel documents to a family attempting to flee Afghanistan last year, a Canadian newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The letters say each of the Afghans named on them has been “granted a VISA to enter Canada” and ask that the group be given “safe travel to the Hamid Karzai International Airport so that they can board their organized flight.”
The family is still in Afghanistan.
According to the Canadian government, the facilitation letters they received from the senator and her office were not authentic, and the people named on them had not been approved to come to Canada.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, conducted an internal investigation and referred the matter to police.
Senator McPhedran said she was trying to help, and that she acted in good faith. She acknowledged using a template version of a government facilitation letter, but she denied that the documents were fake, or that she had used them in an unauthorized way.
“There is nothing fraudulent or illicit about any actions I took with regard to the Afghanistan rescue efforts last August,” she said in an email.
IRCC spokesperson Rémi Larivière said: “The use of inauthentic facilitation letters is a serious matter.” Following the department’s internal investigation, he added, it “made a referral to the appropriate law enforcement partners.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, has announced the release of another American citizen in the country.
Khalilzad said in a post on his X account that, according to information from the Islamic Emirate’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Faye Dai Hall, an American citizen who has been in custody in Afghanistan, will be released soon.
Earlier, George Glezmann, an American citizen whom the Islamic Emirate had held for over two years, was also released.
US Vice President JD Vance said on Friday that Joe Biden administration left about $80 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan, which was a “catastrophic error.”
Vance made the remarks during a visit to a military base in Greenland.
He also said the Biden administration’s “catastrophic error” led to the deaths of 13 US soldiers in an attack during the evacuation at Kabul airport in August 2021.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump also criticized the abandonment of military equipment in Afghanistan and called for its return.
The Islamic Emirate, however, has said that the weapons left by the US in Afghanistan belong to the Afghans and will not be returned.
The Supreme Court announced on Saturday that based on the ruling of the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate, 2,463 prisoners have been pardoned and released on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr.
The court said in a statement that the prison terms of another 3,152 prisoners have been reduced.
Eid in Afghanistan will be celebrated on Sunday or Monday, depending on the moon sighting.
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