Leon Mugesera has launched a desperate bid to block his imminent deportation to Rwanda to face charges of inciting violence and committing crimes against humanity.
Leon Mugesera has launched a desperate bid to block his imminent deportation to Rwanda to face charges of inciting violence and committing crimes against humanity.
A Canadian resident since 1992, Mugesera has been ordered by the Canada Border Services Agency to leave the country by January 12, seven years after the Canadian Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of his deportation.
His lawyer Johanne Doyon, appealed the order in the Federal Court on Monday, seeking to block the move. Mugesera and his lawyer alleged that once deported, he would be subjected to torture and even death, an allegation Rwanda has brushed aside.
In an interview with The New Times, the Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga said that Mugesera has been using the same tricks.
"It is not yet done until it is done. That is the matter for the judge in Canada to decide. Mugesera has managed to manipulate the situation and evade justice for long,” Ngoga said.
"The country his lawyers describe to the court, the one that they say tortures suspects to death, is not Rwanda we know and live in”.
"It is the country they wish and imagine to suit their agenda. We have given adequate fair trial guarantees to Canada and we stand by them. The rest we will wait and see,” Ngoga said.
Federal court Judge Michel Shore will ultimately decide today whether Mugesera stays in Canada or is deported to Rwanda.
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada decided in July 1996 that the former MRND Vice-Chairman for Gisenyi Prefecture’s 1992 speech constituted to incitement to violence and ethnic hatred and therefore had enough grounds for deportation.