A chameleon’s quandary

AFTER 3 DECADES IN CANADA, EX-IRAQI/ISRAELI DOUBLE AGENT’S LEGAL STATUS IN LIMBO

Scrolling through Hussein Ali Sumaida’s social media feeds, one can discern that he enjoys spending time with family, is a foodie and loves the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Behind the scenes, life is a bit more complicated for the 53-yearold Hamilton, Ont., man who fled Iraq in 1990 and sought asylum in Canada.

For the better part of three decades, Sumaida’s legal status in the country has remained in perpetual limbo. On the one hand, immigration authorities have found the one-time double agent for the Iraqi secret police and the Israeli intelligence service to be inadmissible to Canada because of his espionage activities. On the other hand, authorities say he faces the possibility of torture if he returns to his native Iraq or Tunisia, his father’s birthplace.

Despite a Federal Court of Canada ruling this month upholding the government’s refusal to grant him permanent residence, it doesn’t appear Canada is in any rush to kick him out.

Sumaida, who runs a construction company and is married with grown children, told the National Post in a phone interview the lack of a resolution does not weigh on him.

“It’s been 28 years. I have my life, I have my family, I have my business,” he said. “I’ve established myself in Canada . ... It’s home.”

Not everyone takes a generous view of his situation. A recent column in the Toronto Sun said Sumaida had “gamed” Canada’s refugee system long enough.

“After almost three decades of this nonsense, isn’t it time this former spy was left out in the cold?”

The son of an Iraqi diplomat and senior member of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, Sumaida lived a privileged childhood that saw him taken to school in a chauffeured limousine.

But his father’s abusive behaviour pushed him to resentment, he wrote in his 1991 autobiography Circle of Fear. “I turned my hatred of him into hatred of Iraq’s rulers.”

While studying in England in the early 1980s, he joined the local cell of a Shia group, al-Da’wah, that was working against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

But he became disenchanted with the movement and ended up leaking information about alDa’wah’s members to the Iraqi secret security apparatus, the Mukhabarat.

“So by day I went around with the Da’wah putting up stickers that said Saddam was a new Hitler, and by night I went around with Saddam’s agents taking them down,” he wrote.

Troubled that he was “working for the monster Saddam and his killing machine,” Sumaida switched allegiances and joined Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

“Spying, I was to learn, was not so much derring-do as it was banal snooping,” he wrote. “I wasn’t a trained commando, or a specialist in any sensitive area like weapons. My special talent was people. Talking to them, getting them to talk to me . ... I became a chameleon.”

His work included gathering intelligence on the Iraqi embassy in Brussels and spying on members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Worried that his family might be on to him, he confessed to the Mukhabarat that he had been consorting with the enemy. Because of his father’s loyalty to Saddam Hussein’s regime, Sumaida was granted a pardon — on the condition that he become a double agent and work again for the Mukhabarat.

At one point he helped facilitate an arms deal with Abu Al-Abbas, one-time leader of the Palestine Liberation Front.

All the while, he remained conflicted — hating the job of being an informant but loving its “special powers.”

“I began to see how easy it was for Saddam to create his goon squads. I hated the man, and yet look how his ways had seduced me!” he wrote.

In 1990, he finally had enough and fled to Canada and sought asylum. While the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) agreed he faced grave danger if he returned to the Middle East, they concluded he didn’t qualify for protection because of the likelihood that his informing had exposed people to torture or execution — thus constituting crimes against humanity.

The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2000. Sumaida was deported to Tunisia in 2005. As soon as he got off the flight, he claims authorities detained him and subjected him to violent interrogation.

Eventually he was released and the following year he managed to sneak back into Canada using a forged passport. He was found inadmissible to Canada but was granted a reprieve when a pre-removal risk assessment determined he would likely be tortured if returned to Iraq or Tunisia.

However, Sumaida’s repeated attempts to get permanent residence since then have been denied. In his most recent application in 2014, an immigration officer found that his activities amounted to “espionage.”

A federal judge this month upheld that decision. Jared Will, Sumaida’s Toronto lawyer, says an appeal is underway. “He has spent significantly more time in Canada than anywhere else,” Will wrote in an email.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver lawyer who often comments on immigration matters, said he doesn’t think Canada will order Sumaida’s removal — not if there’s a risk of torture. Sometimes Kurland tells his own clients that ”limbo in Canada is better than prison at home.”

Canadian immigration officials did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

In the meantime, Sumaida insists his days as a chameleon are long behind him. In addition to running a home repair business, he says he has been volunteering to help Syrian refugees integrate into Canada.

“It’s a whole different life.”