SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A lawyer for a New Brunswick potato farmer who has been held for months in a Lebanese jail says Ottawa should help his client see a doctor for a mental health assessment.
James Mockler travelled to Beirut last week to visit Henk Tepper in jail and says the 44-year-old farmer from Drummond had difficulty answering some of his questions and stared blankly ahead when they met on July 12.
Tepper has been detained since March 23 under an international arrest warrant over allegations that some potatoes he exported to Algeria were rotten.
Mockler said Tepper is usually a dynamic and energetic person used to operating his large farm, but now he is sleeping for much of the day.
He said he noticed a change in his client’s mental health during the most recent visit compared to a trip two weeks earlier.
“I have a gut feeling. It’s like there was nothing behind his eyes and he just stared,” Mockler said in a telephone interview.
“That frightened me.”
He said the embassy should approach a Lebanese judge to ask that his client be shifted to a hospital for assessments.