Source: CBC News Montreal and The Canadian Press
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Date: February 26, 2016
[PHOTO: Dany Villanueva was facing deportation over an armed robbery charge.]
Dany Villanueva, the brother of a man killed by police in 2008, will be allowed to stay in Canada because of the risks he would face in his native Honduras.
Villanueva was facing deportation after pleading guilty to a 2006 armed robbery.
This week, he received a letter from a representative of federal immigration minister John McCallum, confirming that his request for a pre-removal risk assessment was accepted, his lawyer Stéphane Handfield said.
Federal authorities decided that the risk he faces in Honduras is greater than the danger he poses to Canadian society, Handfield noted.
Villanueva is the brother of Fredy Villanueva, who was gunned down by a police officer at a Montreal North park in August 2008.
He was charged again with armed robbery in 2008, just weeks prior to Fredy's death, but was acquitted in 2011.
Villanueva's lawyer sees this decision as evidence of a "new attitude" in the immigration department since the election of the new Liberal government. "It's like night and day," Handfield said.
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