A former informant who gathered intelligence on political opponents for Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist-Leninist Derg regime has won another chance to obtain permanent resident status in Canada after Federal Court Justice John Norris ruled that immigration officials unreasonably rejected his application for humanitarian relief.

Mesresha Zewide, 54, came to Canada in 2004 and was granted refugee protection in 2008. Immigration officials later determined his involvement with the Derg made him inadmissible to Canada for crimes against humanity and ordered his deportation in 2017, according to the National Post.

Zewide’s work for the communist regime began in 1989, when he was 17 and was forcibly recruited to work for a local kebele in Addis Ababa. The neighbourhood organizations were used by the governing Derg to monitor political opposition.

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For nearly two years, Zewide gathered information on people suspected of belonging to opposition groups, including the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and Ethiopian People’s Liberation Front, and passed that information along.

The consequences for those identified to the regime could be severe.

“People on whom he reported were arrested and imprisoned,” Norris wrote.

Some “would have been subjected to interrogations, beatings, and torture,” the judge added, noting such abuses were endemic during the Derg’s rule.

The Derg was a Marxist-Leninist military dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia for 17 years. Zewide eventually became a target himself after the regime fell. He was arrested and detained in Ethiopia before escaping and ultimately making his way to Canada.

Zewide sought an exemption from his inadmissibility on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. He argued that he had been forcibly conscripted while still a teenager and that his subsequent life, including political activism supporting human rights in Ethiopia, demonstrated that his actions for the Derg did not reflect his character.

A senior Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decision maker rejected his application, finding the positive humanitarian factors insufficient to overcome his inadmissibility.

But Norris found the decision unreasonable.

One problem was the immigration official’s conclusion that Zewide had failed to express remorse and had instead defended his conduct by insisting he had no choice.

Norris called that a “serious mischaracterization.”

The judge said Zewide had acknowledged that both his own conduct and the Derg regime’s actions were wrong. His argument was instead that his age and forced recruitment should reduce the weight given to his conduct when considering humanitarian relief.

Importantly, Norris did not overturn the finding that Zewide is inadmissible to Canada.

The judge instead ruled that the circumstances surrounding his work for the Marxist regime, including his youth and claim of coercion, could mitigate the significance of that inadmissibility when immigration officials weigh whether to grant him permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Norris also criticized the immigration decision maker for suggesting Zewide should consider himself fortunate simply to have been granted refugee protection in Canada, finding that the comment contributed to an unreasonable assessment of his circumstances.

The Federal Court granted Zewide’s application for judicial review and sent the matter back to a different immigration official for a fresh determination.