Hussein Ali Sumaida says Canada is the only safe haven for him even if he spends the rest of his life here without legal status.

A former double agent for the Israeli intelligence service and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, the now 52-year-old Hamilton man said his life would be in danger if he was sent anywhere in the Middle East.

Canadian officials have been trying to remove Sumaida ever since he arrived in Toronto in 1990 for asylum and was deemed inadmissible to the country a year later for his “espionage” activities that they said made him complicit in crimes against humanity.

In fact, Ottawa did deport him once to Tunisia — the birthplace of his Iraqi diplomat father, where he himself had never been — in 2005, but Sumaida assumed a false identity, “Brandon Timothy Casey,” and returned on an emergency passport.

After living a low-profile life over the last decade, raising a family with a job in construction, Sumaida said he recently got a letter in the mail informing him that a pre-removal risk assessment had been initiated to determine if it’s safe for him to be deported to Tunisia again.

“I just want to stay alive in Canada, even with no status. Just don’t make me go back there and be tortured,” Sumaida told the Star. “It is just not fair to leave somebody in limbo for 27 years. We are not animals.”

Sumaida was born in 1965, the son of Ali Mahmoud Sumaida, a trusted member of Hussein’s Baathist party and a former diplomat under the regime. The younger Sumaida attended school in England and knew the notorious Iraqi leader’s sons, Uday and Qusay.

For many years, he was an informant for the Iraqi secret police, the “Mukhabarat” and spied on members of the Al Da’wa opposition party in the United Kingdom, according to the Federal Court decision in his previous removal proceedings in 2005.

He acted as a “mole” and personally participated in exposing 30 to 35 persons and their families to probable torture an executive, said the decision.

Later, the court said, Sumaida switched sides and worked for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and spied on members of the Palestine Liberation Organization until he felt he wasn’t safe anymore doing the job. Once again, he changed sides to snoop on those targeted by the Mukhabarat.

He first arrived Canada in 1990 and sought asylum. The refugee board at the time concluded he had a well-founded fear of persecution in both Iraq and Tunisia, but the claim was denied. He then applied to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds but was also rejected.

In 2005, after years of appeals and challenges in courts and tribunals, Sumaida was deported to Tunisia, where he claimed he was tortured by local officials as soon as he got off his flight.

“Life in Tunisia was intolerable,” said Sumaida. “I couldn’t see what was going to happen one day to the next. By the summer of 2006, I made the decision to find a way to flee Tunisia.”

Since he was on the “no fly” list, Sumaida said he drove to the Algerian border and walked across before making his way to Algiers to board a flight to Amsterdam. From there he said he “went to work using my old training,” assuming a false identity and convincing Canada’s embassy in The Hague to issue him an emergency passport. He returned Toronto on August 28, 2006.

After his return to Canada, Sumaida was convicted of using a fraudulently-obtained passport to circumvent the immigration law to enter the country, making him inadmissible for serious criminality.

Sumaida said his long battle against his deportation has taken a toll on his marriage. Now a father of three, he married his third wife in 2015. His mother and two sisters all were granted asylum in the United States based on his case, he said.

Due to his precarious status in Canada, Sumaida hasn’t been able to leave the country, even to attend his mother’s funeral in Detroit last July, which he watched online via a family member’s smartphone feed.

“I couldn’t go and say goodbye to my mother,” lamented Sumaida. “It’s like sitting in a prison in Canada, but it’s still better than Tunisia. I’m 52 now. I can’t take the beating and torture anymore.”

In a lengthy letter to Sumaida in late January, the Immigration Department concluded it is possible he could be tried in Tunisia for crimes against the state, offences that are punishable by death. However, it said progress has been made in that country in terms of the dismantling of the old state security apparatus.

“The focus of the replacement organizations is on particular threats from Islamic terrorism. Historical concerns about the Israelis dating from the time when the Palestine Liberation Organization was based in Tunisia would no longer appear to be of significant interest or concern,” the letter said.

“These developments bode well, should you be removed to Tunisia in future and would suggest that you would be unlikely to face risk of torture or ill treatment.”

But Sumaida argued immigration officials don’t understand the deep hatred Arab countries have against people who collaborate with Israel.

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“The word ‘Mossad’ is the most feared and hated word. Throwing anyone in the street of any Arab city who is related to the Jewish state would result in nothing less than a lynching mob. How can I possibly get you to understand this from behind Canada’s safe, loving multicultural borders?” asked Sumaida in an interview.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed Sumaida has made numerous attempts to remain in Canada, seeking asylum and twice applying unsuccessfully for permanent residency here on humanitarian grounds. He can be deported pending the outcome of the pre-removal risk assessment, said a spokesperson.

Sumaida was given until March 20 to respond to the Immigration Department’s letter.

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