MONTREAL - A Congolese man accused by the Canadian government of war crimes, and set to be deported, says he's never so much as killed a cat.
Abraham Bahaty Bayavuge said he was a simple computer technician as he denied any wrongdoing Friday in a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Bayavuge is the fifth person arrested from a list of 30 alleged war criminals publicly posted last week by the Conservative government.
But he scoffed at the depiction of him as a threat to society: In the seven years he lived here, openly and freely between 2000 and 2007, he said the worst thing he ever did was get parking tickets for failing to move his car.
"Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow, can anyone prove that I killed even one cat, one cat," he told the hearing. "I wouldn't take a human life, I respect human beings...
"In all my time in this country, the only thing I've gotten is tickets -- for forgetting to move my car to the other side on street-cleaning days."
At Friday's detention hearing, a commissioner ordered that he remain detained because he is considered a flight risk, slated for deportation without any legal recourse left.
But the commissioner derided the notion that Bayavuge is a threat to Canadian society -- as depicted by Ottawa.
The 49-year-old was arrested this week in Ottawa by Canada Border Services Agency agents. He testified Friday via video link.
The hearing heard he tried every legal avenue to stay in Canada and when that didn't work, he tried to convince authorities here that he'd moved to Arizona so they'd stop looking for him.
Eventually, after he had run out of legal avenues, he began trying to apply for refugee status anew under a fake Congolese identity -- complete with falsified documents -- last year.
He gave the CBSA the fake name initially earlier this week, before admitting his true identity during questioning.
The married father of six made an emotional plea to commissioner Yves Dumoulin to release him under conditions so he could see his family -- which includes three grandchildren.
The rest of his family was granted refugee status and, he told the commissioner, he fears he'll never see them again if deported.
Bayavuge lived in Montreal after arriving in Canada in 2000 via the United States.
The immigration board refused his application for refugee status after it said it came across evidence Bayavuge worked as a member of the security services of Congo's Kabila and Mobutu dictatorships.
Bayavuge counters that he was simply a civil servant -- a computer technician who did nothing wrong.
He told the IRB hearing Friday that he'd never even killed a cat.
He vanished in April 2007 as Canadian officials were preparing final details for his return to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He told CBSA agents this week that he'd frequently moved to avoid capture over the past four years.
