Update on Cindor Reeves

Cindor Reeves, the Canadian refugee claimant who risked his life to help build the legal case against his brother-in-law, the former Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor, has received a removal order from the Canada Border Services Agency and may shortly be deported. 

Reeves helped Taylor smuggle guns and diamonds between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Appalled by the human rights violations he saw, he began secretly gathering information for both British intelligence and for the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Special Court put him in witness protection programs in Holland and Germany, neither of which gave him citizenship. He then came with his family to Canada and claimed refugee status.

Canada, which has given the Special Court millions of dollars in funding, has denied Reeves protection. That Reeves faces murder in Liberia is confirmed by those who worked on his case in the Special Court, and by the many threats he has received. Even Canada acknowledges this threat, as it has allowed his wife and children to stay here precisely because their relationship with Reeves would endanger them in Liberia. Reeves’ relationship with himself isn’t enough to save him.

His last chance is a pre-removal risk assessment — the standards for which are higher for Reeves  than for regular refugee claimants because he is accused of committing war crimes. (These alleged crimes amount to his weapons and diamond smuggling on behalf of Taylor, which Reeves has never denied. The IRB has not presented any evidence Reeves himself ever committed violent acts; nor have I, in five years of researching his case, been able to discover any.)

I will stay with this story.