VANCOUVER – The young Asian man, who donned an elaborate disguise that made him appear to be an elderly Caucasian on a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver last fall, said he lied to airport officials because he was “in fear.”
The man, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, appeared before an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Thursday, as his lawyer asked for his client’s release from detention on a $5,000 bond and other conditions.
The asylum seeker previously has been denied release because he was considered a flight risk.
On Thursday, the soft-spoken man told the board during his first in-person appearance that he had a “senior secondary school” education.
Jim Murray, the Canada Border Services Agency representative seeking the man’s continued detention, asked him why he told officers at the Vancouver International Airport that he had an elementary school education.
“I was in fear, therefore I said that,” he answered through a Mandarin interpreter.
Asked to elaborate, he said, “the snakehead told me to say that” – referring to the human smuggler who co-ordinated his entry into Canada.
The man arrived on an Air Canada flight last October and was detained at the airport. His passport, boarding documents and disguise were supplied to him by a smuggler at the Hong Kong airport.
He later apparently admitted to authorities he knew what he had done was wrong.
The case captured worldwide attention after a confidential Canada Border Services Agency intelligence report – which included a photo of the man wearing the disguise – was leaked to CNN. The report characterized the incident as an “unbelievable case of concealment.”
The man said Thursday his father, a farmer, asked a friend in Toronto to post a $5,000 bond for him. He calls him “uncle,” although he is not related by blood, and said he would like to live with him.
“He trusts me and is willing to bond me,” he said.
He said the family friend, who he has known since childhood and used to live in a village near where he grew up, did not know he was coming to Canada and did not help him enter the country.
The asylum-seeker’s lawyer, Daniel McLeod, said his client has been held in jail for more than three months and that the $5,000 bond the family friend is willing to pay is “substantial.”
Mr. McLeod said that many of the Tamil migrants who arrived in Canada last year were released without bond.
The family friend who came to Canada from China several years ago as a “skilled worker,” testified by telephone that he had no knowledge that the young man was going to come to Canada and didn’t know what made him come him here. “I learned about that from the newspaper,” the man told the board.
He said that the young man’s father contacted him about a month ago to discuss posting bond and then the young man himself called him about a week ago from jail to talk about the same thing.
Mr. Murray asked the family friend, who works at a supermarket, how he is raising the money for the bond.
“It is my own money,” he said. “My income.”
Mr. Murray told him that if the young man violated the terms of the bond, the bond would be forfeited and his money would not be returned.
“I understand,” he said.
Asked if he would demand that the family repay him if the bond was forfeited, he said he was not sure.
“This has never been talked about.”
Mr. Murray asked the family friend whether the young man would voluntarily return to China if his claim failed.
He said he believed he would because “his conduct is very good.”
“I have confidence in persuading him to go back to China,” he added. “His family is very honourable.”
In his closing submissions, Mr. Murray said he remains concerned that the young man poses a flight risk.
The family friend has more of a relationship with the young man’s father than with the young man himself, he said.
As there is “no significant personal relationship,” Mr. Murray said, the young man doesn’t have incentive to comply with the conditions of the release.
Murray said the young man has demonstrated he is prepared to follow the smugglers’ instructions “to the letter” even though his conscience told him it was wrong.
“Even today,” Mr. Murray said, “he admitted he gave false answers” when interviewed at the airport.
Mr. Murray asked earlier Thursday if reporters could be excluded from the room over concern that personal information could be disclosed.
Reporters argued that they have complied with an existing publication ban that orders them not to identify the man by name or reveal any other details that could identify him.
They were allowed to stay.
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