234250
235224

Kelowna  

Former Kelowna Hells Angels associate loses deportation fight

HA associate to be deported

A former Kelowna Hells Angels associate faces deportation from Canada after losing a long court battle to stay in the country. 

The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed an application from David Roger Revell, 55, who was appealing the decision of a lower federal judge that upheld a 2016 deportation order.

The 2016 ruling ordered Revell be sent back to England on the grounds of serious and organized criminality. He came to Canada in 1974 from England at the age of 10 and never applied for citizenship. 

He was charged and convicted in 2008 of cocaine possession and trafficking following an RCMP investigation into the East End chapter of the Hells Angels in Kelowna. He was also charged with committing an offence in association with a criminal group, but was acquitted. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the drug charges. 

The Canadian Border and Services Agency flagged Revell at that point, but a deportation order was never made after Revell pleaded his case: that he has zero ties to England and has only visited once, 18 years ago, since he left.

In 2013, Revell pleaded guilty to domestic assault charges, (with a weapon and causing bodily harm) eventually receiving a suspended sentence and two years of probation.

After the assault convictions the federal government started deportation proceedings, during which time Revell admitted he was “inadmissible” on the basis of criminality but alleged abuse of process, claiming he would not have pleaded guilty to assault had he known he'd be deported over it. While the CBSA did not issue him the usual formal warning after his first conviction, the argument was not accepted. 

Revell also claimed in both the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeals that sending him back to England would cause “psychological harm” great enough that it would violate his Charter Rights protecting life, liberty and security. 

In her decision on Oct. 18, Federal Appeals Court Justice Yves de Montigny agreed the deportation would be harsh. 

“I would be inclined to think that uprooting an individual from the country where he has spent the better part of his life (and all of his adult life) and deporting him to a country that he barely knows and where he has no significant relationships, where his prospects of employment are at best grim, and where it is highly unlikely that he will ever be able to reunite with his immediate family, goes beyond the normal consequences of removal,” Justice de Montigny said.

The issue, however, has already been before the Supreme Court of Canada which has previously ruled a deportation in itself cannot violate Section 7 of the Charter. Justice de Montigny and the two other judges on the panel agreed the precedent is clear, and rejected Revell’s appeal. 

"I am thus prevented from concluding that Mr. Revell’s security interest is engaged by deportation, even when accompanied by typical or grave state-imposed psychological stress," Justice de Montigny said.

Revell is currently an oil well technician in Alberta and has three adult children.



More Kelowna News



235998