Relative of Muammar Gaddafi given a new chance to stay in Canada due to uncle's close bond with dead Libyan dictator
A relative of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been given another chance to remain in Canada by arguing he was much closer to the brutal authoritarian regime than immigration officials thought he was.
Seraj Essaadi El Ferjani Ahmed, a citizen of Libya, has been in Canada since 2017 and appears to be the nephew of a notorious member of Gaddafi’s inner circle, a man so loyal he was fleeing with Gaddafi when the leader was caught by rebels in 2011 and killed.
Ahmed came to Canada to study aviation and was denied refugee protection by Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) last year. He appealed that decision to the Federal Court.
His unusual argument is the IRB said it was safe for him to return to Libya because Libyans with “a low-level association with the regime” were not targeted, only “high-ranking officials in the Gaddafi regime or who had close associations with his family or with security forces” were in danger.
Evidence presented in court, however, suggests Ahmed’s uncle is Mansour Daou, who was not just a run-of-the-mill Libyan functionary.
Daou, also spelled Dhao and Dao in different translations into English, was named as Gaddafi’s top security official, one of the few men trusted with the dictator’s safety during the 2011 revolt against his 42-year rule who was with Gaddafi to the very end.
After interviewing Daou in captivity within days of Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, The New York Times described him as “the leader of the feared People’s Guard, a network of loyalists, volunteers and informants.”
Daou said he was Gaddafi’s cousin.
In an interview with CNN around the same time, Daou said that in the days leading to the fall of Tripoli, he was with Gaddafi’s second son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi before joining Gaddafi in Sirte, where the teetering leader made his last stand.
Gaddafi and another son, Mutassem, decided to make a run for Gaddafi’s birthplace in a convoy. Daou, also described in contemporary news accounts as leader of Gaddafi’s personal bodyguards, was in a car with Gaddafi when the convoy was hit by a NATO jet. They fled on foot and hid in drainage pipes.
Video of the chaotic capture shows a bloody Gaddafi being dragged from a concrete drainpipe. He was dead shortly afterward. Daou said he lost consciousness from wounds by then and did not witness Gaddafi’s death.
Ahmed was about 16 at the time.
He was born in Libya in 1995, which was 26 years after Gaddafi seized power in a military coup in 1969.
Ahmed wasn’t alive during much of Gaddafi’s turbulent reign, an era which made the African dictator a household name around the world through his fierce denouncement of the West, cozying up to the Soviet Union, sending assassins around the world to kill dissidents, and sponsoring international terrorism.
Ahmed was born during international sanctions against Libya for Gaddafi’s sheltering terror suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people onboard and 11 more on the ground. Libya later paid US$2.7 billion to the families as a condition of lifting sanctions.
Ahmed was about 16 at the start of the Arab Spring movement in 2011 that sparked widespread revolt against Gaddafi’s rule. As a civil war raged, an international no-fly zone was imposed over Libya, enforced by NATO forces. A NATO airstrike killed one of Gaddafi’s sons and three grandsons.
During that mayhem, in August 2011 — two months before Gaddafi was killed — Ahmed fled Libya with his family, court heard.
He told the IRB that he had lived on a farm in Libya with his immediately family but fled when it was “exposed to bullets.” They went to live at his uncle’s house in southern Libya.
“The uncle’s house was destroyed with the heavy weapons in the downfall of the Gaddafi regime in the fall of 2011. They left Libya with almost nothing and went to Egypt,” court was told.
It appears the uncle who gave them shelter was Daou.
In 2014, Ahmed went to South Africa, a country Gaddafi had good relations with during much of his time in power, to pursue a career in aviation. He returned to Libya in 2015, at age 20, to have a passport issued and returned to Egypt to be with his family and continue as a student.
Ahmed came to Canada in December 2017, court heard. He arrived with a student visa to study aviation, court heard. Three years after arriving in Canada he claimed refugee status, seeking protection from returning to Libya.
During Ahmed’s refugee proceedings, a computer drive was entered as evidence by his former lawyer. Court heard it contained a video of his uncle’s house being attacked, “pictures of my uncle with Gaddafi,” and handwritten references to “Uncle Mansour” above a photo of a man who was later identified as Mansour Daou, court heard.
The computer files also included photos purporting to show the “residential building where my cousin, Ahmed Hamad AI-Ferjani, was staying” when he was killed. He said a few of his family were killed during the civil war.
After Ahmed’s refugee hearing in 2022, his asylum claim was rejected. A refugee adjudicator said he had an alternative country to settle in, namely Sudan, where his father was born.
His internal appeal was heard the following year and the IRB again refused Ahmed’s claim for asylum, saying he had proven neither a well-founded fear of persecution nor that he faced a risk to his life or to cruel and unusual treatment or a danger of torture if he returned to Libya.
He appealed that decision to the Federal Court, and Judge Ekaterina Tsimberis issued her decision on Monday.
Ahmed’s lawyer, Gökhan Toy, had complained to the court that the IRB cherry picked the evidence, selecting a few passages from the government’s package of information, and ignoring Ahmed’s evidence given to the IRB.
Tsimberis found the IRB’s decision was unreasonable.
She said there is no explanation in the IRB’s decision on how the adjudicator concluded Ahmed was “a Libyan with a low-level association with the regime” in the face of contradictory testimony and evidence suggesting close family ties to Gaddafi and his ruling regime, through his uncle.
“The Decision does not contain any indication that the (refugee appeal division) assessed Mr. Ahmed’s evidence, which gives rise to an inference that the evidence was overlooked,” Tsimberis wrote.
She ordered the government to send Ahmed’s case for a new determination by an officer previously uninvolved in the matter.
Ahmed’s lawyer did not return requests for comment by publication deadline.
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