File Photo. Jack Guez—AFP
Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat member had stockpiled guns and ammunition worth thousands in his Ontario home.
A member of a banned Pakistani sectarian group will soon be deported from Canada after being caught with a cache of firearms, an immigration hearing reportedly heard Monday.
According to the daily National Post, a Canadian immigration and refugee board was informed by the Canada Border Services Agency of Muhammad Aqeeq Ansari’s pending deportation. The newspaper said Ansari had stockpiled Can$20,000 worth of guns and ammunition in the basement of a Peterborough, Ontario home.
He has lived in Canada since 2007, but was stripped of his permanent residency and ordered deported last month. An immigration and refugee board ruled him inadmissible to Canada on “security grounds” over his membership in the anti-Shia organization Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), formerly known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). Seven of its members were hanged in Pakistan in January for killings, attempted assassinations and an attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi in 2003.
A spokeswoman for the Canadian Border Services Agency told AFP Ansari would remain in custody until his departure, as he has been deemed to be a flight risk and a “danger to the public.” His detention would be reviewed at a next hearing scheduled on June 29.
Meanwhile, another Pakistani national living in the Toronto area, Jahanzeb Malik, tagged in March as a national security threat, is still awaiting a deportation decision. He was accused of plotting to bomb the U.S. consulate and financial buildings in Toronto. Rather than file charges, authorities took him before the Immigration and Refugee Board to seek his deportation to Pakistan.