Nearly 10 years before he was arrested and accused in the first known Al Qaeda-directed terrorist plot in Canada , Raed Jaser was in the Toronto West Detention Centre, facing deportation.

Then 26, Jaser had been snatched by Canadian officials on an outstanding immigration warrant in August 2004. Criminal activity had first cost him Canadian citizenship. Now, it was threatening to deport him.

But Jaser was to remain in Canada — and allegedly go on to plot a terrorist attack on a VIA Rail train alongside Chiheb Esseghaier , a Tunisian doctoral student arrested in Montreal — simply because there was no where else to go.

Jaser was a stateless Palestinian.

“He has no citizenship in any country,” Jaser’s lawyer, Alex Billingsley, said at the August 2004 Refugee Board hearing. “I believe that Citizenship and Immigration didn’t really know where to deport him to.”

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Jaser, 35, has been on the outside his entire life: His family fled Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, then Germany before coming to Canada as refugees in 1993.

Even in Canada Jaser would stay on the fringe, working illegally and allegedly using aliases while living outside the law. His rap sheet would ultimately include five fraud-related convictions, among others, according to refugee board documents, which do not say what sentences he received.

The immigration and refugee documents detail how Jaser’s family fled from one country to the next.

In 1948, Jaser’s father Mohammed, a native of Jaffa — now part of Israel — was forced to move to Gaza Strip, becoming one of thousands of stateless Palestinians.

His father moved to the United Arab Emirates in 1966, then married Jaser’s mother, Sabah Jaser, in 1976. One year later Jaser was born in Abu Dhabi. “Palestinian,” however, was written on his birth certificate, labelling him an outsider.

The family also spent some time in Jordan, where documents show two of Raed’s younger brothers, Nabil and Shadi, were born.

More trouble for Jaser’s family came following the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990. UAE authorities pressured Mohammed to spy on fellow Palestinians or be deported, including having his children expelled from school, the immigration documents show.

Testifying at a Canadian immigration hearing on his family’s refugee claim in 1993, Mohammed Jaser said he believed his only choice was to leave his home.

But the way forward would be even rockier for Raed and his family.

After flying into Prague in the former Czechoslovakia — now the Czech Republic — the family was forced to travel by foot into Germany.

But things didn’t get easier in Germany after the family settled into a residential compound in Berlin that was home to other immigrants.

In the early hours of Jan. 2, 1992, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the family’s sub-level apartment, striking the wall and window as it burst into flames. Jaser had just turned 14.

“The children were asleep, and from the sound of the bomb and from the flame that burst, the children were waken and they saw the fire and through that all of them were afraid,” Mohammed Jaser said.

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In the documents, Mohammed Jaser described living in a “state of fear.” He would drop his children off and pick them up directly from school. A Palestinian neighbour had rocks thrown through his window.

The following year, the documents show, Jaser’s family would make for Canada with faked French passports from a Turkish man, hoping to find a new start free from persecution.

They touched down at Pearson airport on March 28, 1993. Jaser was 15.

The family initially listed their address as the Woodgreen Red Door Shelter for families on Queen St. East before moving into an apartment in Scarborough.

Meanwhile, immigration officials were hurrying the family’s refugee claim case after an immigration officer noted Sabah was five months’ pregnant with the couple’s fourth son, Ameodeo.

“This case should be concluded ASAP so that if they are denied and to be removed it can be done quickly before her pregnancy is too advanced and before there is a Canadian citizen child to deal with,” the officer wrote in April 1993.

Within the next decade, beginning as early as 1995, Jaser had numerous run-ins with the law, including five fraud convictions. In May 2001, Jaser was convicted with threatening death or bodily harm. For this he was placed on probation for two years and fined $1,000.

Due to his criminal past, he remained stateless as the rest of his family finally became Canadian citizens, the documents say.

In 1998, after officials denied his refugee claims, Jaser continued to unlawfully live in Canada, eluding capture as he allegedly worked illegally, sometimes using fake names.

He was finally arrested in 2004 and faced deportation.

“It was only by way of a proactive immigration investigation that the department was able to locate Mr. Jaser,” said Suzie Kim, lawyer for the Refugee Board, at a 2004 hearing.

As they discussed his deportation, immigration officials realized there was nowhere to send him.

“We don’t know where he’s going to be deported to if he was to be deported,” said Jaser’s lawyer, Billingsley.

Jaser was released just two days after his arrest with a $3,000 deposit paid to the Refugee Board. The amount was to be paid by Jaser’s uncle, Mahmoud Jaser.

Jaser was later pardoned of two offences, and granted a permanent resident status — but not Canadian citizenship.

With files from Michelle Shephard

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