PAROLED U.S. FUGITIVE WINS RIGHT TO SEEK PERMANENT HOME IN CANADA

'It's Been A Long Ride Home,' Says Allen Richardson's Wife Following Hearing

A West Vancouver man who has just served a nine-month jail term in New York
for a 1970 drug crime won the legal right Friday to seek a permanent home
in Canada.

Allen Richardson's application for permanent residency status -- which is
sponsored by his wife, Amalia Richardson -- has to be approved by
immigration officials at the Canadian consulate in Buffalo, N.Y.

But the couple left a hearing in Vancouver smiling after an adjudicator
with the federal immigration and refugee appeal board ruled there were
"humanitarian and compassionate grounds" for granting residency.

Less than 15 minutes after the hearing began, the grateful couple were
thanking those who have supported them since December 1998, when the RCMP
arrested Allen Richardson at his workplace on the University of B.C. campus.

"The fact that a bureaucracy can operate in concert with the values of the
Canada that we love has been very gratifying," Richardson said after the
ruling.

Richardson is still on parole, but his release from prison one week ago and
a one-year residency permit granted earlier by the immigration department
allowed him to return to Canada, which he illegally entered 30 years ago.

Richardson said his first week of freedom has been wonderful:

"Every simple little pleasure when you return from a prison -- fresh air
and rain in your face, walking the dog, or sitting in a comfortable chair
in your own living room -- is a sensual pleasure.

"It still feels like that, and I hope to always retain that sense of joy in
simple things. . . I have to work through anxieties and paranoia that
linger, but I hope that, with the help of family and friends, I'll rapidly
become a normal person."

The ruling by adjudicator Sherry Wiebe overturned a December 1999
immigration department decision to reject Richardson's application for
permanent residency in Canada because he had a criminal record -- a
four-year sentence for selling $20 worth of LSD, when he was a 19-year-old
photography student who led protests against the Vietnam War.

After his conviction, U.S. officials initially sent Richardson to Attica
State Prison, but he was transferred to another prison shortly before a
prisoners' revolt in Attica that ended with 43 dead. He walked away from a
forest work site near the international border and slipped into Canada,
where Canadian activists gave him a false identity.

At the hearing Friday, both an immigration department case officer and
Richardson's lawyer requested, on humanitarian and compassionate grounds,
that the 30-year-old criminal record not be a barrier to his entry into Canada.

Case officer Judy Milne said there's no evidence that Richardson is likely
to re-offend.

Richardson plans to return to his job as a senior laboratory technician at
TRIUMF, Canada's national nuclear physics and particle research facility at
UBC. He was a West Vancouver director of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals and founded the Pacific Bluegrass and Heritage Society.

Aleksandar Stojicevic, Richardson's lawyer, noted that someone convicted of
a similar drug trafficking charge today would not have to serve nine months
in prison.

"My client has more than paid a substantial price for a youthful
indiscretion," Stojicevic said.