generalspeaking

The Many Lives of Khan, Sharif, Iqbal

"[Three high-ranking and well-connected officials in Karachi lost their jobs over the killing [of the defendant's father] and still seek revenge on Khan’s family."
"[The defendant contends the] poison pen [letters were sent as part of the plot to strip him of his refugee protection and force his return to Pakistan]."
"The judgment ignores a considerable body of evidence that shows Saleem Khan is saying the truth."
"We will appeal this to the end of the earth because my client’s life is clearly at risk and they got it wrong."
Montreal lawyer, Stewart Istvanffy

He denies strenuously, charges that he is an international trafficker of heroin using multiple aliases. His lawyer persists in pushing the line that his client has been framed by corrupt Pakistani officials who had originally forced him into exile. An exile that saw Saleem Khan, 55, a Montreal businessman declaring himself a refugee on entering Canada in 1996. Born in 1959 in Pakistan, he declared and pledged  he had never been convicted of any crime (which would have made him inadmissible to Canada) and nor had he ever requested refugee status elsewhere.

He had fled Pakistan, he said, from political opponents who had killed his father, and then turned their attention to him, forcing him to flee for his life. Two anonymous "poison pen" letters turned up in 2001 addressed to Canadian authorities which purported to reveal that the man was married, had children and made use of various names in Pakistan, Germany, the United States and Canada. According to revelations in the letters, he had previously sought refugee protection in Germany, where he was convicted of smuggling heroin.

After investigation by Canadian authorities who were informed by German officials that Khan's fingerprints matched those held in Germany of Sayeed Sharif, born in Afghanistan in 1949, and charged with document forgery and drug offences and that Germany had refused Sharif's asylum claim three years before he had arrived in Canada, the government of Canada moved to rescind Khan's refugee status in 2005, but reversed the process in 2008.

At the very time that Khan had applied for permanent residence in Canada he used the alias Sayeed Sharif he admitted, and that he had been convicted and incarcerated in Germany, and had sought refugee protection there. Pakistani officials, in response to Canadian inquiries reported that Khan was known to them as Arshad Iqbal, a wanted drug trafficker who used false documents to live and travel abroad. He had been arrested in 1994, discovered in possession of nine kilos of heroin in a suitcase. He escaped during his trial in 1995 when he had sought treatment in a hospital.

Pakistan had an outstanding warrant for his arrest. That communication between Pakistan and Canada took place in 2011 at which time Canada once again moved to cancel his refugee status and enact deportation. Hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board saw Khan's lawyer Stewart Istvanffy, contest the information presented by the government, and in turn presented documentation in his possession that cast doubt whether his client was in fact Arshad Iqbal. Sufficient proof existed, declared Istvanffy that Khan is not Iqbal, the real Iqbal arrested and released in Pakistan with photographs that prove the real Iqbal had surrendered to Pakistani authorities.

The IRB accepted the government's application to revoke refugee status from Khan, leading Khan to appeal to the Federal Court of Canada, claiming to have been denied procedural fairness by the IRB. Federal Court Judge Roger Lafreniere dismissed the appeal, despite opposing documentation that Khan could not have been Iqbal, describing the issue as being "nothing more than a red herring", since the final outcome depended on the fact that false information had been declared on the original refugee claim, making him ineligible to be accepted as a refugee to begin with.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!

Labels: Afghanistan, Canada, Heroin Trafficker, Pakistan, Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 08, 2018