Does the Canadian government know something that it’s not telling?
I’m not thinking of their addiction to secrecy, but the deportation of a former KGB officer as a security risk after 12 years of lawfully living in Canada.
Mikhail Lennikov, formerly of the KGB, has been given refuge in Vancouver’s First Lutheran Church to avoid immediate deportation to Russia, while his wife Irina and 17-year-old son, Dmitri, remain in Canada.
The son and wife are not being deported: Federal Court Judge Russell Zinn feels the son would face harassment and reprisals if he returned to Russia because his father would be deemed a traitor. As for Lennikov, 48, Judge Zinn felt there’s no evidence he’d face “arrest and imprisonment and charges of treason” by returning to Russia.
Oh?
Why would the son face reprisals and the father not? How much does Judge Zinn know of Russia and the KGB and the former Soviet Union?
Unless the government has reason to suppose Lennikov is not what he seems, and that he’s a threat to security, then a heinous act of inhumanity is being directed against this family.
Heck, it used to be that if KGB officers defected to Canada – or any Western country – they’d be treated as welcome guests and subsidized. In fact we encouraged Soviet intelligence officers to defect, to join our side against an ideological foe that subverted enemies and sought world domination.
Now we dump them back to a regime that is no longer “Soviet,” but has only superficial trappings of democracy or enlightened behavior.
The KGB no longer exists, but its replacement, the Federal Security Service (FSB) is composed of many who were once KGB. The Prime Minister of Russia (past president), Vladimir Putin, was a ranking KGB officer before he turned to politics when the Soviet Union imploded.
Intelligence and espionage agencies have long, unforgiving memories. It’s not only the KGB that specialized in assassinations, but their less publicized successors also murder opponents – even journalists.
Lennikov left Russia in 1995 and wound up in Canada in 1997 on a student visa. He took a masters course at the University of British Columbia and applied for residence. He didn’t try to hide his KGB record, but insisted he was a reluctant member. In an interview with the CBC, Lennikov said as a KGB officer he had been posted to Vladivostok, at the Pacific end of the trans-Siberian railway – hardly a hotbed of KGB espionage or SMERSH assassinations.
Reluctant or not, he’s had a good record in Canada, is gainfully employed, and hardly seems a security risk (again, unless CSIS has damning details that can’t be revealed – which seems highly unlikely).
Judge Zinn sees little difference in Lennikov’s case and any other immigration case. A former, or defecting KGB officer is like no other applicant for permanent residence. The experiences of others – and the track record of Russian Intelligence – indicate otherwise.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan have washed their hands of the case. They both should know that life will be unacceptably unpleasant for someone like Lennikov in Russia. He may well disappear.
Why there’s no generosity towards Lennikov is puzzling. To break up this family is cruel and unfair – unless, of course, the government has valid reasons to feel he threatens the nation’s security.
If that is so (I suspect it isn’t), the question begs why Lennikov was allowed to stay free and employed for as long as he did?
Petitions circulated on behalf of Lennikov haven’t had much effect. Some MPs argue for him, but the government resolutely refuses to do anything but sit on its hands. For shame.
1 response so far
1 chephren // Jun 5, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Send Lennikov back where he came from, please.
The title of this piece is telling – and completely wrong-headed. Why should we “embrace” this man, just because he was once a KGB agent? This is nostalgia, not an assessment of the case on its merits. Lennikov is not Igor Gouzenko. He is not “defecting”.
By his own account, Lennikov left the KGB in 1988 and stayed on in Russia unmolested until 1995. He overstayed his Canadian student visa years ago, gambling that the Canadian immigration system, which gives refugee claimants almost limitless opportunities to work and endless avenues of appeal, would give him a pass. All appeals have now failed.
The story Lennikov tells to justify the granting of Canadian residency is weak and contradictory. He insists that he was not a big fish, merely a low-level translator and sometime spy who left the KGB in 1988, then stayed on in Russia unmolested for several years afterward. Yet he claims that he will face harrassment, imprisonment and worse if he is sent back. If his KGB career was so inconsequential, why does he claim to be at such great risk in Russia?
There may be aspects of this case unknown to the public. Lennikov may well have a CSIS file that shows him to be undesirable in Canada – or not. We will probably never know. Whatever facts the government based its case on, Lennikov has failed every appeal. He is subject to the law as all Canadian refugee claimants are. Send him back.
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