Arshad Muhammad was among 30 men on the federal government’s highly publicized “Most Wanted” list released in the summer of 2011. He was arrested a day after Ottawa launched a website listing the alleged war criminals and posting their photos.
However, in October 2011 a Citizenship and Immigration officer conducted a pre-removal risk assessment and deemed Muhammad’s life would be at risk if he were deported back to Pakistan, due to his alleged links to an Islamist group involved in terrorist attacks.
Last December, the Canada Border Services Agency overruled that decision after a review concluded he posed a threat to Canada’s national security.
At an emergency hearing Friday to stay Muhammad’s deportation on Sunday, a Federal Court of Canada judge heard that Glenda Lavergne, a director general at Canada Border Services Agency, and Michel Dupuis, her counterpart at immigration, met over the decision sometime between October 2011 and May 2012.
“CBSA and Ms. Lavergne, in particular, were upset and dismayed by the positive decision on risk made by the PRRA (pre-removal risk assessment) officer,” said Reg Williams, a former border agency enforcement director, in an affidavit filed in court.
“It is my belief that the source of the indignation was how CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) could allow a relatively low-level officer, such as a PRRA officer, to make a positive risk determination that had such enormous consequences for the government’s newly created ‘Most Wanted’ program and how such an outcome could occur without ‘oversight’ within CIC, given the enormity of what was at stake.”
While it was not unusual for immigration and border officials to meet over their work, Williams testified that discussions over a specific case could jeopardize the fairness of the risk-assessment process.
Lorne Waldman, Muhammad’s lawyer, called such discussions “unprecedented interference.”
“It’s an attempt to subvert the administration of justice,” he told Justice Mary Gleason via teleconference Friday.
Waldman said the brow-raising publicity of the Most Wanted program by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has made conditions dangerous for Muhammad, who came to Toronto as a refugee in 1999 and went underground in 2003 after he exhausted all legal avenues to remain here.
Sharon Guthrie, lawyer for the government, told the court she had no knowledge of the meetings and disputed the testimony of Williams, who was in charge of the border agency’s Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre before his retirement in May 2012.
While admitting “interference” was a serious allegation, Guthrie said there was no basis for Williams’ belief of the agency’s “indignation” or how he reached that conclusion, given he was not directly involved in Muhammad’s case.
Even if such meetings had occurred, Guthrie argued, there was nothing “problematic” for the two departments to discuss their files.
The court will release its decision Saturday.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Nicholas Keung
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