Federal cabinet minister John Baird has jetted to Ethiopia in a bid to secure the release of long-jailed Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal.

The Transport Minister arrived in Addis Ababa this morning and told family members he expects to visit Mr. Makhtal before he leaves Ethiopia late tonight.

“I'm hoping that the minister will bring a good result – either bring Bashir back to Canada or some good result,” said Bashir Makhtal's cousin Said Maktal, who lives in Hamilton and spells his last name differently from the imprisoned Canadian.

Bashir Makhtal has spent three years in Ethiopian jails on terrorism charges but his family says he is really being punished because grandfather was one of the founders of the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Said Maktal said it's very unlikely that Ethiopia's government will pardon his cousin, but another option would be for Ottawa to ask Ethiopia to let Bashir Makhtal to serve his sentence in Canada, even though Canada has expressed disappointment at his conviction in a trial that had been criticized by human rights activists.

Canadian officials have for months pressed their Ethiopian counterparts to release Bashir Makhtal, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon raised the case with Ethiopian officials when he was in Addis Ababa from Jan. 29 to 31 for the African Union summit.

But Mr. Baird's trip is the first time a Canadian minister has travelled there expressly to visit Mr. Makhtal and lobby for his release – a step that increases diplomatic pressure.

The Transport Minister became involved in the case because he was lobbied through the large Somali-Canadian community in his Ottawa riding.

Bashir Makhtal, a former Toronto resident, is an ethnic Somali who was born in Eastern Ethiopia but raised in Somalia from the age of 11 in Somalia until came to Canada in 1991 as a refugee. He has been a Canadian citizen since 1994.

In 2002, he returned to Africa to start a business selling used clothes. In December 2006, he returned to Somalia on a visit, but Ethiopian troops entered the country, and he was arrested as he fled to the Kenyan border.

His family says he has never had any involvement in separatist rebel groups, and insists that Ethiopia's government has convicted him because his grandfather was a founder of the ONLF. “They did all this damage because it's the Makhtal family,” said Said Maktal.