Government Sued by New Brunswick Farmer Who Spent a Year in Beirut jail

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A farmer from New Brunswick, who recently suffered in a Beirut jail for more than a year over allegations of shipping rotten potatoes to Algeria, has decided to sue the Canadian government for not protecting his Charter rights. Henk Tepper mentioned in a statement of claim addressed to the Federal Court in Ottawa on Monday that the government failed to do its part for trying to secure his release.

In the documents filed regarding the lawsuit, it is stated that “the defendant’s conduct constitutes a marked departure from the ordinary standards of decent behaviour and interfered with one of Tepper’s most fundamental rights as a human being, the right to liberty and security of person.” Additionally, the documents claim that “the defendant blatantly disregarded the repeated requests of Tepper, his family members, his legal counsel and the Lebanese authorities for assistance in securing Tepper’s release.” Furthermore, the high-profile $16.5-million lawsuit goes on to assert that the RCMP provided misinformation to Algerian authorities before Tepper’s arrest.

The Lebanese authorities arrested Tepper in Lebanon on March 23, 2011, while he was travelling to the Middle East on an agricultural trade mission to promote seed potatoes from Canada. Tepper was detained in compliance of an international arrest warrant issued over allegations regarding the export of rotten potatoes to Algeria in 2007 and forging said export documents. Even though Tepper completely denied the allegations, he recently returned to Canada on March 31, 2012, because his lawyers acquired a Lebanese presidential decree.