War crimes allegation puzzles lawyer

TORONTO - Toronto lawyer Raoul Boulakia doesn’t understand why a former client is among the 30 named on a Canada Border Services Agency list of suspected war criminals.

Frank Kobena Berko(left in picture), of Ghana, who applied for refugee status, wasn’t found to have committed any crimes against humanity but was deemed guilty by association with a government agency where he was employed.

He was ordered out of Canada in 1997 after Judge Howard Wetston refused an appeal of a deportation order.

The 58-year-old was a member of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution in Ghana and claimed he dealt with smuggling issues in Sampa, near the border with Ivory Coast, and that he was beaten when he complained about abuses committed by the militia in 1992.

“He said he served there for a number of years and that he was in a rural area and he didn’t deal with any political situations,” Boulakia said.

Berko claimed he wasn’t responsible for any human rights abuse, said Boulakia, who represented the man in federal court in Toronto in 1997.

“What the (refugee) board decided, because he served with the CDR, that should just be inferred that he has a responsibility ... whether or not he did anything and the federal court upheld that decision,” Boulakia said.

“It was a very broad decision, it was not a finding that he actually committed a human rights abuse himself, it was a finding that because he was a member of a group,” he was guilty by association, he said.

A 1990 Immigration and Refugee Board paper on the CDR and the Civil Defence Organization in Ghana cited an Anglican Church of Canada report that both groups “include intimidation and invoke insecurity and fear. Further, these groups include some ‘uneducated ruffians’ who abuse their power and engage in ‘rough and ready justice,’ sometimes on the strength of a rumour. Their actions include beatings, arrests and other forms of repression.”

Boulakia emphasized the board found no link between Berko and any wrongdoing and said he’d be surprised if his former client was still in the country.