http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iBD9qVgwapgcUihxQkWhyOeJiUJg


MONTREAL - Former justice minister Irwin Cotler and an interfaith delegation will meet with Indian authorities in Ottawa on Monday in hopes of freeing a Montreal businessman imprisoned in northeastern India.

Saul Itzhayek, 42, was sentenced to three years in jail on accusations of entering the country from Nepal with an expired visa. He has been held in the remote, rat-infested Motihari Prison since last May.

Cotler, the MP for Itzhayek's Mount-Royal riding, has been campaigning for his release.

\"We are hoping for a concrete sign from the Indian government that, in fact, they will use the executive authority that they have to release Saul Itzhayek and return him to Canada,\" he said Sunday.

\"This has gone on far too long. He's been languishing eight months now in an Indian prison.\"

Cotler, along with a group of prominent Montreal religious leaders, will meet with Indian High Commissioner Rajamani Lakshmi Narayan on Monday.

\"The time has come now for action,\" said Cotler, who has already discussed the case with Narayan.

\"I think the Indian authorities understand that no crime has been committed.\"

The delegation will also meet with Helena Guergis, Canada's junior minister for consular affairs, and officials from the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and Guergis have raised Itzhayek's case with Indian authorities, but they have offered few details about the meetings.

Delegation member Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz called the Canadian government's pleas \"serious efforts,\" but insists it must step up pressure until Itzhayek is free.

\"We have to keep working until we get him home,\" Steinmetz said. \"This is an absolute miscarriage of justice.\"

Itzhayek was in Nepal on business when he claims he sent his driver into India to pick up money that was being wired to him. But when Indian police stopped his driver at the border, they seized Itzhayek's travel documents.

He has filed sworn statements saying Indian police offered him safe passage back into India to collect his documents. Instead, they arrested him for entering the country illegally.

Itzhayek, who has a wife and two children in Montreal, was also allegedly asked to pay a bribe for his freedom.