Ottawa family fighting deportation of mother

A Cuban woman who has lived in Ottawa for the last two years and started a family is fighting to stay in Canada after her refugee claim was rejected last month.

Maria Matos Ruiz is from Cuba but has Spanish citizenship because her former husband was from Spain. She said it was an abusive relationship, prompting her to flee Spain for Canada.

But Canadian immigration officials denied her refugee claim, and said since Spain was a democratic country she was in no danger and should live there. The Cuban government has also said it won’t allow Matos Ruiz to return to live in the country she left behind.

“I’m very depressed, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to go,” said Matos Ruiz.

Since moving to Ottawa, she has had a child with her common-law husband, Ismael Perez, who supports his family as an OC Transpo bus driver. They have a seven-month-old daughter, Michelle, born in Ottawa. Both Perez and the child are Canadian citizens.

Former crown witness at Montreal murder trial ordered deported

Raymond Ellis was slain in a case of mistaken identity during a gang war

MONTREAL – A street gang member who was at the very heart of a controversy that saw a murder trial tossed out has been ordered deported.

Wilkerno Dragon, 27, was a crown witness in the trial of five men accused of killing Raymond Ellis, a 25-year-old Dawson College graduate who was stabbed to death in a case of mistaken identity. Ellis was killed on Oct. 23, 2005, in a club on St. Denis St. A large group of people tied to a Blues-affiliated street gang mistakenly thought he was a rival gang member. They believed Ellis, who was not part of a gang, had killed Passius Rydewood, a member of the Blues.

With a second-degree murder trial against five men in full stride, by November 2008, Dragon was called to testify about what he saw the night Ellis was killed. But he gave curt answers to prosecutor Louis Bouthillier’s questions, which caused the crown attorney to ask to suspend his testimony. Dragon, who was in a provincial detention centre at the time, was declared a hostile witness and the jury hearing the trial instead listened to recordings of previous testimony he gave during a preliminary inquiry.

The police began investigating evidence that Dragon was offered $15,000, by one of the accused, to recant his testimony. Bouthillier was aware of the investigation and sought to delay the trial so the Montreal police could complete their probe to find out who had offered to bribe Dragon. But Bouthillier failed to disclose to the court that the bribery investigation was the reason he asked for a delay. This caused Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque to permanently suspend the trial. Last year, the Quebec Court of Appeal reversed Bourque’s decision and ordered a new trial.

Dragon is not likely to be called upon as a witness again, but he might not even be in Canada when the trial begins. The next date in the case has been set for Dec. 3.

Descending into the lives of reoffenders

Dikila M'Bosso

On Jan. 3, 2005, Martha Taylor Gregory, a 64-year-old grandmother, was stabbed and beaten by four teenagers who were out joyriding in a stolen minivan and decided to steal her car on a whim. It was a senseless crime that captured the attention of Montrealers. The teens were all between 13 and 17. All four were quickly arrested and convicted in youth court. They served between 12 and 16 months in youth detention facilities. A look back at the crime has revealed that all four have since reoffended and three have serious adult criminal records. One is an alleged street gang member facing deportation, another is serving an 11-year sentence for a sexual assault.

Sporting a track suit and using an overly familiar tone when addressing the judge before him, Dikila M’Bosso, 21,

waived his right to a preliminary inquiry on Friday in a case where the alleged street gang member is charged with storming into a social housing unit with two accomplices last summer and holding five men hostage during an apparent robbery.

M’Bosso opted to go straight to a trial, possibly this year. He did the same on Tuesday in a case where he is charged with possessing ammunition for at least three types of prohibited firearms.

M’Bosso has kept the provincial courts busy this month. On April 4, he also had a court date in Laval for allegedly leaving the scene of a car accident in 2010. He failed to show up for that hearing.

Each court date serves as a reminder M’Bosso has been a man in limbo since March 14, 2011, when the Federal Court of Canada confirmed a previous decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board ordering his removal. The immigration department’s position is that M’Bosso is inadmissible in Canada on two grounds – because he is part of a criminal organization and has a criminal record that already involves several convictions. During his immigration hearing, the Montreal police alleged M’Bosso has, since the age of 16, been part of two street gangs controlled by the Bo-Gars, a gang based in northern Montreal.