M Ramachelvam, who heads the Malaysian Bar’s Migrants, Refugees and Immigration Committee, said this would help the process of relocating Hassan al-Kontar to Canada for which he had been hoping.

“He should be granted refugee status. Obviously, he is an asylum seeker from what has been reported. Therefore, he should be accorded asylum in our country to facilitate his exit to a third country for resettlement,” Ramachelvam said.

Kontar is wanted by Syrian authorities for refusing to join the country’s mandatory military service.

The former salesman once worked in the UAE but was deported to Malaysia as his visa was not renewed.

On March 7, he was barred from boarding a flight to Ecuador.

Immigration director-general Mustafar Ali, who said Kontar’s social media posts had embarrassed Malaysia, said the man was arrested because he was in a restricted area without a boarding pass.

Deputy Home Minister Mohd Azis Jamman meanwhile claimed Kontar was adamant about being relocated to Canada where he has relatives, and had rejected offers of asylum from other countries.

Ramachelvam said Kontar must accept asylum here, adding that the process of relocating would take years.

He said Malaysia must also accept him as an asylum seeker, which would be in line with the courts’ recent decision not to send home 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims wanted by authorities in China. The men were sent to Turkey instead.

Kontar, 36, had survived on airline meals donated by the public. In a series of YouTube videos, he accused rights groups of refusing to help him.

A civil war has been raging in Syria for the past seven years, leaving more than 350,000 people dead with millions of refugees making their way to Europe.

Kontar’s plight has been compared to the character played by Tom Hanks in the film “The Terminal”, which centres on a man stranded in a US airport after a coup in his home country renders his travel papers useless.