Or grant China's most-wanted man asylum and unwillingly tell the world that Canada is a sunny place for shady people, a haven for international suspects facing excessive punishment at home? "Canada is clearly not a safe haven for criminals," Murray Wilkinson, a Canadian immigration enforcement officer, said recently at a political refugee hearing in Vancouver.
Kevin Laue of Redress, which represents torture survivors, said: "There's a lot of talk from the government that Britain should not be a safe haven for war criminals, genocide suspects and other international crimes suspects.
Britain and other international powers suspect the programme is intended to produce an atomic weapon.
Because of the delicate nature of the operation — the attempted capture of an international terrorism suspect — only a few government officials were informed of the raid, Mr. Banlaoi noted.
Qatada was first detained in Britain as an international terror suspect more than 10 years ago under the Belmarsh regime of emergency terrorism legislation, which was ruled illegal.
He was found the following October and detained in Belmarsh as a risk to national security as an al-Qaida-linked international terror suspect.
That is because international analysts suspect that the North is testing a bomb sufficiently miniaturised to fit on its recently launched Unha-3 rocket, which successfully put a satellite into orbit in December.
The international terror suspect, a Jordanian national, was sent back to Amman from Britain last summer after a long legal battle that was only resolved after the home secretary, Theresa May, secured a treaty that guaranteed he would not face a trial that involved the use of evidence obtained by torture.
Abu Qatada, 53, an international terror suspect who was once described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, is subject to a UN travel ban as well as the indefinite British deportation order, and as a Jordanian citizen is now barred from returning to Britain.
International powers suspect Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran strongly denies.
