Man convicted of Mafia-related charges 20 years ago ordered deported to Italy

MONTREAL – A man convicted 20 years ago on Mafia-related charges was issued a deportation order on Friday despite having lived in Canada for the last 50 years.

The Canada Border Services Agency told Michele Torre, 64, he’ll be deported to his native Italy on Sept. 16.

“They already have a plane ticket,” Torre’s lawyer, Stephane Handfield, said in an interview, adding Ottawa only began deportation proceedings in 2013.

Handfield immediately filed an appeal with the CBSA agent who ordered the deportation and was told a decision will be made by Monday or Tuesday.

Torre pleaded guilty in 1996 in a cocaine conspiracy case involving Montreal’s Cotroni crime family and served part of his nine-year sentence in prison.

His daughter, Nellie, 38, broke into tears during a phone interview describing how her father will be leaving behind his ailing wife, three children and six grandchildren behind.

She says Torre worked as a cook in a Montreal cafe in 1992 before it was bought by organized crime members in 1994. One day, his bosses told Torre to go and pick up a package they said was coffee, she added.

“He only found out three days later why he got arrested,” she said. “It was a set-up. They used him. He went to pick up coffee.”

Torre became a permanent resident after arriving in Canada from Italy in 1967.

Handfield says he should have been asked to leave the country in 1996 after his conviction but he wasn’t.

Since 2013, the Canadian government has been trying to remove Torre from the country for “serious criminality and organized criminality.”

Torre was arrested again in 2006 during a major police operation aimed at dismantling the Mafia. He spent three years in preventive custody and was ultimately acquitted.

Handfield says his client has had no links to organized crime since his 1996 arrest.

If the stay application fails with the CBSA, Handfield intends to appeal to the Federal Court.

Handfield has also sent letters to Canada’s immigration and public safety ministers asking for a ministerial reprieve on humanitarian grounds.