Wrongly deported, Albanian family returns to Toronto after more than two years in hiding and fearing for their lives
Tabaj family returns. The Tabaj family arrives at Pearson Airport’s Terminal 3 yesterday after being allowed back in the country following a judge’s ruling that they were wrongfully deported. Seen here are parents Arjan and Anilda with daughter Maria and twin sons Kristian and Vincenzo. Staff Photo/IAN KELSO Timeline
November 1998 - The Tabaj family flees to Canada from their native Albania and file a refugee claim, fearing political violence in their home country.
May 1999 - The family abandons their refugee claim and return to Albania, thinking the unrest had died down and that they would be safe.
April 7, 2000 - Arjan Tabaj becomes the victim of an assassination attempt in Tirana, Albania - one that kills his best friend and brother-in-law and costs him his left leg (he now wears a prosthetic limb) and the use of his left arm.
January 2001 - The family returns to Canada using fake passports. They are repeatedly denied refugee claimant status due to their previously abandoned claim.
January 6, 2006 - Twins Kristian and Vincenco are born in Toronto.
November 2007 - Arjan and Anilda are each taken into custody and held in detention pending their deportation.
December 2007 - Wrzesnewskyj, then-Etobicoke Centre MP, pledges $5,000 out-of pocket to secure Anilda's release, so that she can spend Christmas with her children.
February 2008 - Arjan Tabaj is also released from detention, but the family's fight to not be deported continues. A petition is filed on the Tabaj family's behalf, urging Diane Finley, then minister of Citizenship and Immigration, to use discretion in deciding the family's fate under section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
February 2009 - With their deportation date scheduled for March 2009, the Tabaj's daughter Maria writes a plea to Stephen Harper to allow her family to stay in Canada
- On Feb. 27 the Tabaj family's deportation order is indefinitely postponed to allow them to complete several immigration applications. The family's status hinges largely upon the ministry's decision on a humanitarian application and a pre-removal risk assessment.
June 8, 2009 - The Tabaj family is deported to Albania, where they quickly go into hiding.
January 2010 - Tabaj family receive several death threats.
February 2010 - Arjan and Vincenco escape a drive-by shooting on the entire family with only minor facial scrapes following yet another assassination attempt on the family in Tirana, Albania. In a letter to Kenney later that week, Wrzesnewskyj once again pleads the family's case in light of recent events, asking the minister to allow temporary visitor permits to bring the Tabaj family to Canada and "remove them from harm's way and potential assassination."
May 2010 - Two applications (one a pre-removal risk assessment and the other a humanitarian and compassionate one) filed to Citizenship and Immigration Canada before the Tabaj family's June 8, 2009 deportation, get approved - more than a year after the family were forcibly flown back to Albania.
The process of bringing the family back to Canada, lawyers said at the time, should take no longer than a month to complete.
September 2010 - After CItizenship and Immigration Canada announces it is vacating the pre-removal risk assessment decision, Wrzesnewskyj makes the potentially dangerous call to go public with their plight yet again. He continues to demand answers as to why the government seems intent to continuing exposing the family to "unnecessary yet significant lethal risk."
August 30, 2011 - Justice Sandra J. Simpson orders that the Tabaj family be issued two-year Temporary Resident Permits (TRPs), and that the family's applications for permanent residence as protected persons be completed soon after their return to Canada.
Sept. 22, 2011 - The Tabaj family makes their safe return to Canada.
