Lawyer for alleged Basque terrorist to fight deportation order from Canada

Immigration and Refugee Board commissioner Louis Dube said Tuesday there is sufficient evidence to show that Ivan Apaolaza Sancho was a member of Basque separatist group ETA. Sancho, 36, who has denied ever supporting ETA, showed little emotion when Dube read out his decision.

Sancho has been held in a detention centre since his arrest last June and he was ordered on Tuesday to stay there for another 30 days.

His lawyer, William Sloan, says he will go to Federal Court to challenge the deportation ruling. He also intends to go to Quebec Superior Court to fight Sancho's detention.

Sancho appeared via video linkup from an immigration centre.

Dube said in his decision he agrees with Sancho's lawyers that some evidence against him should be rejected.

That included testimony from Ana Belen Egues Gurruchaga, a Basque detainee in Spain, because it was likely obtained under torture.

Also disregarded was a European police document that named Sancho as an ETA member

But Dube said there was sufficient evidence in the form of sworn police affidavits and warrants for him to be deported.

Sloan argued that roughly the same information provided by Gurruchaga was used in the police warrants.

"When the police write information on a piece of paper, there is somehow a disconnect between that piece of paper and the same information obtained under torture by a detainee," Sloan said.

"It doesn't make a terrible amount of sense."

Sancho, a Spanish national, will also have to undergo a risk assessment before he is deported, Sloan said.

The lawyer assumes the deportation order will take a few months to execute.

Sancho was arrested on a Quebec City ferry by the RCMP last summer on an immigration warrant and is wanted by Spain in connection with a series of car bombings tied to ETA.