The Globe and Mail has more details about Lafta's visit to Simon Fraser:
A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States.
Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta -- best known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million -- will arrive at Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet with research associates.
Dr. Lafta was born in Baghdad in 1960, was trained as a physician at Baghdad University College and then worked for 14 years for the Ministry of Health under Saddam Hussein. He became the head of the communicable disease department and then the primary-care department of Diyala province in northern Iraq.
Dr. Lafta, who is still in Iraq, couldn't be reached by e-mail yesterday. But Dr. Takaro shared a message from his personal communication. "The main point is that people outside Iraq do not realize the real disaster we are suffering," Dr. Lafta writes. "Only the Iraqi people know that, simply because the foreigners are listening to the news while we are living the events on the ground."
Well no, it really doesn't have any more details.
Unless these quoted details are the explanation and are a coded way of explaining that he was denied a visa because he was probably a Ba'ath party member in order to work for 14 years in a professional position under Saddam.
If that's not the case then a more accurate description would be "globe and mail implies that they made an effort to discover why his visa was denied but there is no evidence that this effort was made. More non-updates on this story as they come to hand".
It seems that the Brits are throwing their own spanner in the works.