RELEASE OF DRUG DEALER A JOKE: MP

Heroin Trafficker Ordered Deported 10 Years Ago Is Free

The case of a convicted heroin trafficker from Iran who is free
despite a decade-old deportation order makes a laughingstock of the
Canadian immigration system, Conservative MP Randy White said Wednesday.

White was reacting to a Vancouver Sun story about Massoud Boroumand,
who was released from jail earlier this month by an immigration board
adjudicator despite the concerns of the immigration department and the
RCMP.

"Our system is built so that anybody who wants to exhaust a
deportation order can do it and will do it," White said.

"We have become so inefficient with deportations that we are just a
laughingstock. Criminals know that."

Immigration department lawyer King Wong argued at an Aug. 9 detention
hearing that the RCMP believes Boroumand is a member of an organized
crime group linked to fraud, kidnapping and drug trafficking who
violated earlier release conditions by meeting with the gang's leader
last June.

But board member Irene Dicaire said the evidence presented did not
prove conclusively that Boroumand had committed crimes with the
alleged gang leader, Omid Tahvili, despite the fact that the two men
were captured in RCMP surveillance photos three days after Tahvili
allegedly kidnapped and assaulted a man.

The fate of Boroumand, who was convicted of heroin trafficking in
1992, is now in the hands of the federal immigration minister, who
must decide if his criminal past overrides the risk he would face if
returned to his native Iran. Last October, a department pre-removal
risk assessment said Boroumand could be tortured if he was returned.

That contradicted an assessment done a decade ago after Boroumand was
first ordered deported. He went underground in August 1995 instead of
showing up for his flight back to Iran. But the RCMP discovered
Boroumand's real identity in 2002 as it was investigating an alleged
crime group headed by Tahvili.

Boroumand was arrested with Tahvili in December 2002 as the two were
being driven around in a Rolls-Royce, leading to the latest series of
immigration hearings involving the Iranian native.

The fact that Boroumand is still here is an affront to all the
legitimate refugees and immigrants, White said.

"The system is so abused -- so dreadfully abused -- nowadays by people
who shouldn't be here. It is embarrassing that we as a country
accommodate individuals who shouldn't be accommodated to the extent
that they are," White said. "It is really time for the government and
politicians at all party levels to look at how this system is failing
us. Everybody in Canada I think does subscribe to people coming into
the country, working, obeying the laws, refugees on a humanitarian
basis and all of that, but there are a select number of people abusing
the whole system and making a mockery of it for everybody else who
genuinely wants to live within the rules."

After Boroumand's 2002 arrest, he was held in custody until October
2004, when Dicaire released him because of the expected delay in
Ottawa in reviewing his case.

"I have the feeling that Justice, the solicitor-general, the minister
of immigration, all those people, at least two departments, are now
involved in the making of a decision and it is probably one of the
decisions where the extreme rights and privileges and limitations are
at stake because we're talking here about the Charter of Rights and
the guarantees they give to the treatment of an individual case where
the security of one individual may face torture if sent to his country
would be counterbalanced with the safety and security of the Canadian
public, as well entitled to live in a secure country," Dicaire said in
her oral reasons for her ruling.

Boroumand was arrested again Aug. 5 after the RCMP saw him meeting
with Tahvili June 24. Tahvili is now facing a series of charges
related to a June 20 kidnapping in which the alleged victim told
police he was brutally assaulted. He also has an admissibility hearing
before the refugee board next month.

Despite the immigration department's push to keep Boroumand in
custody, Dicaire sided with his defence lawyer, Lorne Waldman, who
argued the surveillance photos proved nothing.

Waldman was away and unavailable for comment Wednesday.

White, who is retiring from politics in the coming months, expressed
his frustration at the lack of improvement in the immigration system
over the last decade.