Ex-spy in final fight to stay in Canada
HALIFAX — A former Arab-israeli counter-terrorism agent who was jailed after trying to set himself on fire in downtown Halifax to protest his deportation last fall will soon know whether he can stay in Canada.
His lawyer, Lee Cohen, filed a 450-page application to the federal immigration department in December that Cohen says proves without a doubt his client was a heavily used Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operative over a 4 1/2 year period while based in Halifax, from 2012 to 2016.
The documents are part of a pre-removal risk assessment application that the department reviews to ensure people aren’t being deported “to a country where they would be in danger or at risk of persecution.”
Cohen and his client prepared the exhaustive report that Cohen says shows that the former operative provided invaluable information on hundreds of people targeted by CSIS who had ties to international terrorist groups, such as ISIS, Al-qaeda and Hezbollah, as well as the Iranian and Saudi Arabian governments. It also shows his client would be in grave danger if deported back to Israel he says.
But Cohen said the success rate for pre-removal risk assessment applications is about five per cent. That means his client, who has asked that his identity be withheld for his safety and not to jeopardize his last-ditch plea to stay in Canada, is running out of time. A decision on his case could come within a month, said Cohen. But the lawyer remains confident the legal test has been met in this case: proving his client was a CSIS operative and that his life is in danger if he is deported to Israel.
The odds are stacked against his client because the former spy is being betrayed by a country that he put himself at considerable risk to protect, said Cohen.
“The thing that disturbs me the most and the concern for Canadians here is that there are people in this country who are working very hard, as my client did, doing dangerous things to save Canada from harm, keeping Canadians safe, and at the end of that the Canadian government is kicking them to the curb. Worse, they’re kicking them out of the country,” said Cohen. “In the case of my client, throwing him out of the country puts his life at risk.”
The former operative claims CSIS promised him permanent residency in exchange for his service. When he offered his surveillance expertise to the Canadian intelligence agency in 2012 he was unable to secure refugee status and was facing deportation.
He put his trust in CSIS but was let down, said Cohen.
“The surveillance work and the people he befriended and co-opted allowed him to notify the Canadian government of people oversees who were planning to apply, to visit or study or immigrate to Canada, who were involved in nefarious activities and whose applications were ultimately rejected. He was very directly involved in keeping people out of Canada who were deemed to be a danger.”
During his tenure with CSIS, he was involved in hundreds of highly classified assignments, but was dropped by the organization in 2016. The former spy said he was simply no longer needed.
He settled in Halifax and started a small business, figuring CSIS would honour its commitment to keep him in Canada.
The Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) took action this summer, activating his removal order from years ago, and his deportation date was set for Sept 8. On that day he tried to light himself on fire outside the Halifax CSIS office on Barrington Street. He was promptly arrested by Halifax Regional Police officers and jailed for more than two months.
"It's hard to believe," said Cohen. "Here's a guy who was given hundreds of assignments almost every week from his CSIS handlers. He went out like a real soldier and worked very, very hard at some risk to himself because he was befriending people and becoming a member of organizations entirely to surveil them to provide detailed reports. These were all people of interest to CSIS.”
This isn’t the former spy’s first go at a pre-removal risk assessment application. He filed his second application in 2017, about a year after being cut by CSIS, but the former spy did not disclose that he had worked for CSIS on the application because he was told by the agency to keep it secret. At the time he believed he was following the proper channels to remain in Canada and that CSIS, with the CBSA, was working behind the scenes to keep him here. But that was not the case. Cohen, who took the case on in mid-july, argued his client's pre-removal risk assessment application needed to be reassessed with details of his CSIS work. He spent months unsuccessfully appealing to the Department of Public Safety (which oversees CSIS and CBSA) and the Immigration Department.
After getting no government co-operation, he took the case to the Federal Court of Canada in early October.
The judge agreed to pause the former operative’s deportation before ruling on whether he could resubmit his pre-removal risk assessment application. About a month later, Cohen arranged his client's release from prison, in mid-november.
Mysteriously, just after his client's release, the CBSA seemingly had a change of heart and allowed Cohen and his client to resubmit the application. The move was a clear indication to Cohen that the government understood that the federal court judge would have sided with his client. Seeing that inevitability, the CBSA wanted to speed up the process of deporting his client, said Cohen.
"My suspicion there is that the CBSA said, 'The guy won in federal court so he’s now out of jail, let’s get the PRRA decided and once it’s decided and presumably in the negative, then we can deport him.'"
If the application fails, Cohen and his client would be out of options, he said.
He said letters to Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair got no response. The minister can single-handedly stop his client's deportation and put an end to his suffering, said Cohen.
“My client thought the work that he was doing was in return for a promise that he understood CSIS to have made to keep him in Canada,” Cohen said. “It’s a terrible betrayal.”
The Public Safety Department would not comment on the former operative's case, but a spokesman said, “Canada has a robust assessment process and safeguards to ensure that no one is removed to risk or persecution.”