STARK questions
Canada refuses sanctuary to a soldier in Charles Taylor’s army
Sampson Jalloh was a young man when conscripted by the rebel army in Liberia that had tortured and murdered his father. A member of the Mandingo ethnic minority, his job was to go into villages and lure fellow Mandingoes out of their homes, where they would be brutalized and killed by rebel fighters.
After four years of such barbarism he fled, eventually arriving in Canada, where he claimed refugee status.
His appeal for sanctuary here has been turned down, however, with the government not believing he was forced into his gruesome duties, instead declaring him guilty of crimes against humanity and being a member of an organization engaged in terrorism and subversion. He has been ordered deported, but his removal still faces potential legal challenges.
The case highlights the stark, potentially life-or-death questions that must be answered by the Immigration and Refugee Board and the Federal Court of Canada. Mr. Jalloh, now 41 and living in Toronto, and his lawyer argued that he was a victim of the atrocities, not complicit in them.
In 1992, at the age of 22, he was conscripted by the rebels who had executed his father during the long, bloody civil war in the West African country, Mr. Jalloh told the IRB.
He was tortured and beaten and forced to participate in the activities of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, under threats of death, he said.
He told Canadian officials he was a captive, not a willing member. Although he had some freedom of movement he could not run away without fear of being shot or caught and executed. All of the rebels carried guns, he said, but he was not given one.
Known as the First Liberian Civil War, nasty battles waged from 1989 to 1996, becoming one of Africa’s bloodiest wars, with more than 200,000 killed and another million displaced into refugee camps.
Mr. Jalloh said some of the rebel raids he participated in were undertaken by the Small Boys Unit, a band of child soldiers as young as eight who were forcibly recruited and trained into vicious troops. Most were much younger than him, he said.
(The existence of the SBU in Liberia — before it was deployed in Sierra Leone, which brought the use of child soldiers to international notoriety — was debated at Mr. Taylor’s war crimes trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. A verdict in Mr. Taylor’s trial in The Hague is expected this month.)
Mr. Jalloh told Canada’s immigration officials he witnessed people being tortured and killed and at times he had to transport corpses. De- spite his role in luring ethnic Mandingos to their deaths, he never participated directly in any of the violence, he said.
After a peace deal in Liberia in 1996 he fled to neighbouring Guinea. In 2006, he arrived in Canada and claimed refugee status.
Not helping his credibility, the IRB heard of a previous refugee claim he made in the Netherlands. Mr. Jalloh was asked why his story in Canada was so different. He said he was coached by a smuggler what to tell Dutch officials and followed the advice. After that claim was rejected, he fled to Canada to avoid being deported to Liberia.
He said that after speaking with legal counsel here, he put forth a claim based on a true account.
Although not mentioned in the case, Mr. Jalloh was also arrested north of Toronto in 2009 for trying to convince a businessman that he and a partner had smuggled $3-million out of Africa, but had to disguise the money as cardboard to get it into Canada. They needed a large payment to fund the money’s conversion back into legal tender, they claimed.
They demonstrated to the businessman, cleaning two disguised bills into Canadian $20 bills, Durham Regional Police said. Mr. Jalloh pleaded guilty to fraud over $5,000 and con- spiracy to commit fraud while his co-accused fled Canada before trial.
The IRB concluded that Mr. Jalloh’s participation in the Liberian raids made him directly responsible for the harm caused to the victims. He was declared inadmissible to Canada, a decision he appealed to the Federal Court. This month, Justice James W. O’reilly upheld the IRB’S decision.
“Given his lengthy and extensive involvement in the raids, their violent nature, his lack of effort to distance himself from the group, and his failure to take steps to protect the victims of the NPFL, the board found Mr. Jalloh fell within the broad definition of a member,” Justice O’reilly summarized in his decision.
“The board ... did not believe Mr. Jalloh’s assertion that he was continuously held captive and had no chance to escape.”
Justice O’reilly took issue with the way the IRB came to its conclusions, but ultimately ruled it made no difference to the end result.
“The board’s conclusion was intelligible, justified and transparent; it came within the range of defensible outcomes based on the facts and the law,” he ruled.
Through his Toronto lawyer, Paul Vandervennen, Mr. Jalloh declined to comment on his plight.
“He’s afraid of returning to Liberia,” Mr. Vandervennen said, confirming his client was seeking a Pre-removal Risk Assessment, a process that must determine if a person being deported from Canada faces undue danger if returned.