DRUG DEALER FEARS DEATH IF DEPORTED

City lawyer Marilyn Burns-MacLean has six days to save her client from
deportation to Iran - and, she believes, from certain death.

But all she has left in her legal arsenal is a long-shot constitutional
challenge that, if successful, could create new immigration law in Canada.

"It's desperate. Very, very desperate," Burns-MacLean conceded yesterday.
"But it's all I've got.

"To me, this is a death sentence for him."

Morteza Borhania, 29, was told Monday that he will be deported Sept. 22, on
the grounds that he was convicted four years ago of drug trafficking.

The Iranian refugee says he will be executed upon his return to his native
country because he has converted from Islam to Christianity and, more
significantly, because, he says, he deserted the Iranian army during the
1980s Iran-Iraq war, then went on Iraqi radio to denounce his homeland.

"I know that I've done wrong; I'm ashamed and I'm embarrassed," Borhania,
who's in custody at the Edmonton Remand Centre pending his deportation,
said of his drug crimes.

"But now I'm a changed man.

"I had a problem and I did a crime, but I paid for that crime already. I
don't deserve to die."

Borhania, who calls himself Tom, came to Canada as a refugee in 1991 during
the Persian Gulf War.

While living in Toronto, he says, he became addicted to heroin and, two
weeks after moving to Edmonton, was nabbed with enough of the drug to
warrant trafficking charges.

He pleaded guilty to two drug offences and was sentenced to three years in
prison. While behind bars, a deportation order was issued on the grounds
that drug traffickers are considered dangerous under Canadian immigration law.

He appealed and lost, then went on the run for two years after being
released on parole.

Authorities caught up with him again last spring, but before he could be
deported his lawyer got him a stay while she tried to convince a federal
judge he isn't dangerous.

The judge has since rejected her argument and the stay was lifted, clearing
the way for his removal on Tuesday.

Now Burns-MacLean has a new argument she hopes to present to the Federal
Court to get another stay and, ultimately, to get the deportation order
overturned. She plans to argue that sending someone to a country where he
faces certain torture or death is cruel and unusual punishment and is an
affront to his constitutional right to life, liberty and security of person.

"If this guy was scum, I wouldn't care," she said of her decision to take
the case. "But he's a really good guy."

Copyright (c) 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan