I was recently interviewed by Canwest Global Newswire on a troubling question: Why are war criminals and terrorists ordered deported by Canadian courts still in Canada, marking time and fighting deportation after exhausting all legal remedies? The case of Rwandan war criminal Leon Mugesera has been going on since 1993 and went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which cleared his deportation as valid. But two years later, he is still here, trying to get more kicks at the can. A more outrageous case is that Mahmood Issa Mohammed, a terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convicted in Greece of hijacking a plane on the tarmac of Athens airport in 1970, who managed to enter Canada under a false identity in 1988...Almost twenty years later, he is still here! What kind of message is Canada sending to the world? Due process does not mean 20 years in the court system. That is abuse of process and lack of guts from the part of the government. If these characters would be in jail while putting forward all those fancy (and mostly groundless) judicial reviews, I would bet you that their cases would be moving a lot faster...The Canadian public has the right to know why these individuals are still here....Is there an ulterior motive? Or is it simply incompetence? Are there political considerations involved? I say send them back ASAP. We need the government to LIMIT the rights of review for those involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or multiple crimes of violence. This should not be our problem. We are exceedingly naive otherwise, and let these people use us for years on end... and by the way...please lock them up while they appeal...it will give them an incentive to move things faster... Read the National Post story where I was quoted:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=f6eb63eb-ba36-4300-a13c-3c292af4a3f4&k=0
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