Russian refugee says Canada deporting him to face fighting in Ukraine or torture in jail
Canada is set to deport a 51-year-old failed refugee claimant to likely mobilization in the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine, and has dismissed his fears about being used as “cannon fodder” by relying on an old article from the Russia Today propaganda outlet, the National Post newspaper has learned.
“For me the choice will be simple,” said Timurdzhan Nazhmetdinov in an interview. Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, when it was part of Soviet Union, he worked in Russia as an economist for an energy company and is a lieutenant in reserve since military training as a university student. “I will either have to go to the war to fight against the Ukrainian people, or I will end up in jail for refusing to go to war.”
He fears jail would mean torture and maltreatment as he claims to have suffered already, due to his financial support and protesting for anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. He presented documentary evidence that his brother and father died from injuries suffered in police custody.
He also fears that, as an ethnic Uzbek Muslim, he will be sent to the front lines as cannon fodder. In order to justify deporting him to the custody of Russian authorities despite this claimed risk, however, Canada has relied for evidence on a nearly eight-year-old news brief about Russian military mobilization law from Russia Today, a notoriously propagandistic Russian news outlet.
Russia Today is so widely mistrusted because of its role as a state controlled media outlet that Canada’s broadcast regulator last March banned its television stations from Canadian networks. Russia Today’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan is also the subject of sanctions by Canada over the Ukraine war .
Nevertheless, in Nazhmetdinov’s pre-removal risk assessment, an officer relies on Russia Today to dismiss Nazhmetdinov’s fears that Muslims like him are disproportionately sent to the front lines.
The risk assessment reads: “The applicant states that as a Muslim he would be subjected to serve on the front lines. However, according to RT, “ideological or religious pacifists can take alternative civilian service, but that term is twice as long as regular military service” (27 Mar. 2015).”
That quotation comes ultimately from a Russia Today article from 2015. However, it comes directly from an IRB research document referenced as RUS105142.E and dated “23 April 2015,” about a year after Russia annexed Crimea, and seven years before it launched a war on all of Ukraine, leading to major personnel losses, dramatic new Russian conscription efforts, and widespread anti-mobilization protests, including among Russian Muslim communities.
“This is insane what they have done by using this source without verifying the credibility,” said Toronto immigration consultant Jane Katkova-brown, who represents Nazhmetdinov.
Asked whether relying on this evidence is appropriate in the present context, Anna Pape, spokesperson for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, said the IRB’S research on refugee producing countries is “selected from publicly available sources to represent a variety of viewpoints, including those from the country of origin’s media and government.”
The Russia file was updated last March, about a month after the war began, and two weeks after RT was excluded from Canada’s airwaves. It is scheduled to be updated again next month. She said it comes with a disclaimer that the information “does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection.”
Canadian authorities heard Nazhmetdinov’s case and rejected much of his persecution story on grounds of credibility and failure to provide sufficient documentary proof of his fears. The recent risk assessment is a separate step based only on newly available evidence.
He claimed he and his brother had been supporting members of Navalny’s FBK (Anti-corruption Foundation) since 2016, and took part in protests that year and the next, both times leading to incarceration for several days and beatings during interrogation. He claimed to have pursued official redress but his complaints went nowhere.
He arrived in Canada on a visitor’s visa in May 2017, leaving his wife and their young daughter. That October, he claimed his brother died after an assault in custody by police.
His initial request for protection from Canada was rejected that November. The following September, his father similarly died of a brain bleed within a few hours of a police interrogation. Soon after, Russia declared FBK a foreign agent. It was later designated an extremist group and forced to close, and relaunched last year as an international group.
Nazhmetdinov claimed this seizure of FBK files led to a criminal notice against him. But a Refugee Protection Division panel had concerns about the legitimacy of this document, which shows no security features other than a stamp, and does not “outweigh the already existing credibility concerns.”
Since the Ukraine invasion, Nazhmetdinov has also received via mail at his Moscow apartment summonses to register at the Military Commissariat on pain of prosecution. In his risk assessment, however, the Canadian officer noted Nazhmetdinov has not provided any warrant or summons “to indicate that the authorities in Russia are either aware that he failed to attend the military centre for mobilization, or that they would wish to prosecute him with respect for this.”
This week, after the Post inquired about his case, Nazhmetdinov received an order to present himself on Thursday to Canada Border Services Agency in Toronto for what his legal representatives fear is likely arrest in advance of deportation.
Russia Today is so widely mistrusted because of its role as a state controlled media outlet that Canada’s broadcast regulator last March banned its television stations from Canadian networks.