Company Kept: Fear of Reprisal

"[It should have been obvious this was an] illegal military group. [The applicant had ample opportunity to flee. That he remained made him complicit in crimes against humanity]."
"These vehicles would not be returning to Syria with guns on top of them -- to shoot unarmed women, children, men of every religion [had Boutros Massroua not been complicit in repairing them for Islamic State]."
Immigration adjudicator, Immigration and Refugee Board

IRB member Michal Fox wrote that ISIS needed Massroua’s automotive expertise and that by working for the terrorist group he had “willingly and knowingly” contributed to ISIS.

"Their members [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] are not human beings.They are worse than animals that kill each other."
"The smell [of blood in a vehicle he repaired] sort of made me nauseous."
"My wife and I fear from two sides: ISIS and Hezbollah. Hezbollah said that if I did not comply then they would kill both me and my wife."
Canadian Immigration applicant Boutros Massroua, 54, resident in British Columbia

"The apartment was in chaos. When I got downstairs, I went to the garage where my daughter parked her car, I noticed that the car windows were smashed."
"...I immediately called my daughter and told her what had happened and what should I do. Should I call the police? It was then that she told me everything and that she and her husband are under threat of being killed."
Massroua's mother-in-law, Beirut, Lebanon

"This introduction [night drive to a hangar] surely must have put the claimant on alert that he was, at least, going to a criminal operation of some sort ... something clandestine."
"[Even after seeing blood and a weapon in a vehicle, Massroua kept returning] over and over."
"[If not for Massroua's repair work] these vehicles would not be returned to Syria with guns on top of them -- to shoot unarmed women, children, men of every religion, to blow up buildings, and to keep food from reaching the starving people of Syria."
"This is a significant contribution to the entire war effort of ISIS."
Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Michael Fox

Canadian immigration authorities rejected the refugee claim of Boutros Massroua, seen in an image scanned from court documents, because of work he did repairing vehicles for ISIL.    Supplied

Mr. Massroua's wife obtained refugee status when her well-founded fear of returning to her native Lebanon was recognized. But the refugee appeal division of the IRB upheld the decision made by adjudicator Fox with the note that Massrouia had made a decision to remain where he was, irrespective of how vulnerable and fearful he later claimed to have been. That he had a "safe avenue or escape" that he failed to take immediate advantage of, weakened his narrative of a dawning realization of whom he was dealing with and his inability to take swift action. In so doing, contributing significantly to ISIL's capacity to wreak atrocities on their hapless victims.

Federal government lawyers recorded in court papers that Massroua had "failed o establish a fairly arguable case" that he had been wronged when immigration authorities denied his claim for refugee status, citing a genuine fear of returning to his native Lebanon, haunted by fear of both ISIL and Hezbollah, both recognized as terrorist groups by Canadian law. His 2015 claim had failed to convince the IRB that he was innocent of all but naivety in not realizing at first who it was that had retained his professional services as an auto mechanic.

Now the Federal Court of Canada has scheduled a hearing of his case, the very last appeal available to the man since all others have failed. From hearing transcripts Massroua described the background of his situation beginning in 2014 when a stranger named Abou Mohamad approached him to repair his SUV. Massroua and his wife lived close to the Syrian border in Zahle, Lebanon where he worked for a small auto repair shop. Job done, he was offered a good-paying side position repairing cars at another garage: "I had no suspicions at this point".

Vehicles were integral to the ISIS campaign, Canada's Refugee Appeal Division wrote in finding a man complicit in crimes against humanity.     Militant website via AP

Soon afterward he was taken to another location staffed by people with accents who were reinforcing the floors of jeeps, all without license plates, outfitting their rooftops with metal cases that he recognized were meant for weapons. Returning to the hangar, always in someone else's car, then patted down, stripped of phone, instructed to remove the cross he wore as a Catholic, he once worked on a truck sticky with blood on the cab seat and floor, and which held a machine gun. After that he offered excuses hoping not to return. But, he said, they came anyway for him.

Three times he was taken across the border to repair vehicles."I was convinced by then that they were ISIS". Finally, he was visited by a Hezbollah fighter who accused him of working for ISIL. Which led him and his wife to begin planning to reunite with his sister in Canada. Hezbollah offered to pay him well for spying on ISIL, to take photographs and wear a wire. They moved to his wife's parents' home in Beirut. They got their passports in order and obtained visas for Canada, and flew there in May 2015, informing family they would be back in a few months.

When he appeared before the Immigration and Refugee Board to determine whether he would be admissible to Canada as a refugee, he was initially given a sympathetic hearing. A review of the claim in 2016 changed that, when adjudicator Fox concluded the applicant met the standard set by the Supreme Court of Canada for excluding a refugee claimant in view of complicity in international crimes. Massroua met that threshold as far as Fox was concerned.

A group of Islamic State group recruits riding in armed trucks. Handout/AFP/Getty Images

"That his appeal was rejected and that he was found to be complicit in crimes against humanity is a victory for human rights and should help guide how the Canadian government moves forward in dealing with its citizens who joined ISIS and have returned to Canada."
"ISIS has carried out the most horrific mass atrocity crimes in Syria and Iraq, and Canadians, male and female, who travelled to the Middle East to join the group are equally complicit as the Lebanese asylum-seeker."
Kyle Matthews, executive director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies