Canada gave citizenship to a terrorist.
Revoking it has been ‘ridiculously’ slow
On May 31, 2001, a former Pakistan army captain named Tahawwur Hussain Rana swore the oath of citizenship in front of an Ottawa judge, who anointed him a Canadian.
But he is a fraudulent Canadian, according to hundreds of pages of government documents obtained by Global News that allege he obtained his citizenship through “deception.”
The documents show that an RCMP investigation uncovered considerable evidence that Rana lied on his citizen application form by claiming he resided in Canada, when he did not.
Nonetheless, immigration officials gave him not just citizenship but also a passport — which he used to fly to Mumbai, India to allegedly mastermind a terrorist attack that killed 166 people.
Twenty-five years after Rana swore at his citizenship ceremony to “fulfill my duties as a Canadian,” the federal government is still trying to undo the supposed mistake.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has asked the Federal Court to revoke his citizenship on the grounds that he became a Canadian through “misrepresentation.”
The case, however, is still unresolved.
Now awaiting trial in India for what police describe as his key role in the group behind one of the world’s deadliest terrorist plots, Rana remains a citizen of Canada.
Acquiring Canadian citizenship is a relatively straightforward process familiar to millions. Revoking it from those who never should have received it takes considerably longer.
A Global News review of cases that have come before the court over the past two years reveals that it routinely takes more than a decade to rescind citizenship from those who obtained it through fraud.
Even when immigration officials appear to have substantial evidence that foreign nationals obtained citizenship by submitting false information, the process is plodding.
Canada’s immigration department declined to disclose its “processing timelines” or discuss individual cases, but a Global News review identified 11 handled by the Federal Court since Jan. 1, 2024.
In almost every instance, the time between the start of an investigation and revocation was at least 10 years — and some are still ongoing.
The only one that took less time involved a Filipino man who became a Canadian using a fake name. Revoking his citizenship was an eight-year exercise. A court challenge that was denied in 2024 lasted another year.
The most common reason cited by the government for rescinding citizenship was that it was obtained under a false identity, according to the Global News review.
For example, when a Sri Lankan became a citizen in 2000 using the persona of a dead relative, and then married his cousin, it took 11 years to fix, plus two more for a court appeal.
In another case, a Canadian admitted in 2011 that he was paid to marry a Chinese woman and sponsor her for citizenship. Her appeals were only exhausted in 2026.
The cases also involved citizenship that officials said was wrongly granted to those who had concealed their involvement in crimes and war crimes.
The slowest and perhaps most harrowing recent case involved a former Guatemalan army officer who became a citizen in 1992 after hiding his role in a massacre.
Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes was a commander of a 1982 military operation that executed the entire population of Las Dos Erres, Guatemala.
The soldiers bashed infants against trees; others were killed with sledgehammers. Girls were raped and executed. Men and boys were hanged from trees, according to the Federal Court.
To finish off any survivors, Sosa fired his gun into the well where the bodies had been dumped and also tossed in a grenade, the Federal Court ruled. The death toll was 350.
“When the patrol unit left Las Dos Erres, the village was effectively wiped off the face of the earth,” wrote the Canadian judge who ruled on Sosa’s role.
Although Sosa was identified as a suspect in the massacre in 2000, his citizenship was only revoked in February of this year.
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