VANCOUVER, BC—A one-time British leader of the Babbar Khalsa has been ordered to appear at an immigration hearing to decide whether he should be admissible to Canada.
Gurmej Singh Gill [aka Gurmej Singh Babbar] arrived in Vancouver to visit relatives in late November and was supposed to be returning to his Birmingham, England home on Dec. 22.
But instead of leaving Canada with his wife, he was ordered to appear before an immigration and refugee board adjudicator under the security section of the Immigration Act.
IRB communications adviser Melissa Anderson confirmed Monday that Gill “had an admissibility hearing scheduled for Jan. 27. It has been postponed and it is yet to be rescheduled.”
Anderson said the hearing will likely be held in late February or early March.
It is not the first time the former Babbar Khalsa leader has run into problems with Canadian immigration officials.
He was arrested at Vancouver airport in August 2001 when he arrived for his son’s wedding in Surrey and was sent back to England without attending the festivities.
Gill earlier told The Vancouver Sun that he renounced his membership in the Babbar Khalsa International in 2001, after the group was banned in the U.K.
But he also said that during the period he headed the British branch of the organization, “I had done nothing wrong.”
“People who do believe in violence — I had nothing to do with them because British law doesn’t allow these things,” he said.
For years Gill called himself Gurmej Singh Babbar and regularly visited B.C., where he once lived.
Khalistan Zindabad