Canada, A Haven

"Mr. Mohammad flagrantly violated Canada's fair immigration laws and this country's generosity. He made a mockery of our legal system. Under our new reformed refugee determination system, someone like Mohammad Issa Mohammad would not be able to wait for years for a decision on his refugee claim. It would be decided in a matter of weeks, and rather than getting endless years of appeals, he would have one appeal and then be subject to removal, and so I think this case demonstrates the necessity of the reforms that we've made and continue to make.
"Given the nature of this case we ... didn't want to take any chances. If this guy got on a commercial aircraft and suddenly said he was feeling chest pains or something, we didn't want to have to turn that plane around and have him back in Canada."
Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney

And so it was that a special ambulance flight was arranged to fly the man from Ottawa to Lebanon, which had agreed to take him, and for which Ottawa is grateful. The cost of that flight would be "significantly" over $15,000, but not too steep a price to be rid of a terrorist who had lived a long life in Canada, along with his wife and three children, in Brantford, Ontario. His lawyer, Barbara Jackman, objects over his ouster from Canada.

Her client, she insists, is sick and elderly. He suffers from coronary disease and advanced-stage diabetes, causing his kidneys and vision to fail, along with neuropathy leaving him with no feeling in his hands and feet. He underwent a heart angioplasty (a common enough procedure), just three days before he was removed. He has no family in Lebanon, where he has just arrived, at age 70.

But those are the wages of time and justice catching up with someone who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the armed wing of the PLO.

After twenty-six years of evading expulsion from Canada, using Canadian justice to continually appeal the government's wish to rid itself of a terrorist on Canadian soil, and costing millions in the process, the Canada Border Services Agency was pleased to escort Mr. Mohammad back to Lebanon where he has some legal status.

And this final successful end to a long and frustrating episode in dysfunctional immigration law has convinced Minister Kenney that some success in ridding the country of a handful of Egyptian citizens implicated in terrorism might also be successful.

They had been members of the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, settled in Canada, just as Mr. Mohammad had done, without divulging their background to Immigration authorities, resulting in their slipping into the country under false pretenses. Because of their Brotherhood Association Canada was unable previously to expel them back to their country of birth which might leave them vulnerable to vengeful harm. With the new Muslim Brotherhood-led government all that is changed.

As for the Palestinian terrorist, Mr. Mohammad, whose actions in attacking an Israeli airliner in Greece, killing one passenger in a hail of bullets fired with 83 rounds, lobbing six grenades at the Boeing 707, his 17-year imprisonment sentence in Greece turned into two years in prison when the terror group hijacked a Greek airliner with threats to kill all on board unless he was set free from prison. Freed, he went to Madrid, where he applied to emigrate to Canada without disclosing his crime and punishment.

"It really was a thorn in our side, much like some of the known Nazi war criminals who were able to dodge the system. There was just something glaringly unjust about his ability to take advantage of everything that Canada had to offer even though he had blood on his hands", commented Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

In appealing the immigration adjudicator who ruled to deport him, Mr. Mohammad applied for refugee status which was rejected. Still, one appeal after another was heard by the courts. He claimed to have abandoned his violent past. He did not wish to return to Lebanon, since he would be "vulnerable to assassination", he claimed, manipulating a well-known Canadian concern in deporting people back to their countries of origin.

The cost of the legal process was enormous, said Mr. Kenney. "I could easily say it runs into the millions of dollars", referring to the protracted appeals by Mr. Mohammad who "spent an awful lot of time fighting his deportation. This case is almost a comedy of errors with delays, with a system that was so bogged down in redundant process and endless appeals that it seemed to some like we would never be able to enforce the integrity of Canada's immigration system and deport this terrorist killer."

"I can tell you that a case like this could not happen under the laws that we've adopted."