Canada-“failed refugee” still in country due to sexual assualt on minors charges attacks woman with machete in home invasion
Alleged attacker had been ordered deported
METRO VANCOUVER - A failed 23-year-old refugee claimant from Rwanda was ordered deported from Canada long before he was charged in a violent Surrey home invasion last week that left a woman with serious leg injuries.
But he wasn’t removed from the country because he was waiting to stand trial on charges of sexually assaulting two minors in 2005, according to immigration documents.
Alex Ishmail (or Ismail) Murwanashyaka is accused of breaking into a Surrey home on April 1, tying up a mother and her nine-year-old daughter with wire and slashing the backs of the woman’s legs before making off with $15, a bank card and the victim’s car.
It’s just the latest in a string of violent criminal charges dating back to when Murwanashyaka was a teenager in Ontario.
The transcript of an Immigration and Refugee Board detention review hearing on July 25, 2007 chronicles years of criminal activity by the young man who entered Canada at the age of 14.
As of last year, Murwanashyaka had been convicted twice for assaulting a police officer, five times for possession of drugs for the purposes of trafficking, once for assault and once for possession of a dangerous weapon.
Murwanashyaka said then that he was working in construction and living with his twin brother, Felix, near the 29th Avenue SkyTrain station in Vancouver.
Gregory Zuck, counsel for Citizen and Immigration Canada, said at last July’s hearing that Murwanashyaka was ordered deported in 2006, having failed to qualify as a refugee.
But he wasn’t removed because of two outstanding charges of sexual assault of minors dating back to 2005, Zuck said.
“If Mr. Murwanashyaka was not facing Crown charges right now, he more likely than not would have been removed a long time ago,” Zuck said at the hearing.