AHEAD of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India, the Canadian government has started proceedings to revoke the citizenship of Pakistan-born businessman Tahawwur Rana Hussain, according to a Global News report.
Documents obtained by Global News show immigration officials have informed Rana that they intend to strip him of the Canadian citizenship he acquired in 2001. The move is not linked to terrorism charges but to alleged misrepresentation in his citizenship application.
Rana, 64, is a Pakistan-born Canadian national and an associate of one of the main conspirators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, David Coleman Headley, alias Daood Gilani, a US citizen. He immigrated to Canada in 1997 and was later convicted in the US of plotting to attack staff at a Danish newspaper.
Rana, described as a key conspirator in the 26/11 attack, which killed 166 people, was extradited from the United States to India in April 2025. He was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) after landing in New Delhi.
In its decision, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Rana’s citizenship was being revoked not for terrorism, but because he lied on his application form, the report said.
When Rana applied for citizenship in 2000, he claimed he had lived in Ottawa and Toronto for the previous four years, with only a six-day absence from the country, IRCC said in a report.
An RCMP investigation found he had spent almost that entire time in Chicago, where he owned properties and businesses, including an immigration firm and a grocery store.
The revocation decision accused him of “a serious and deliberate deception” and said his “lack of respect for the citizenship laws of Canada” led immigration officials to grant him citizenship.
“Yours is a case in which it appears that you misrepresented your residence in Canada during the application process for citizenship by deliberately failing to declare your absences from Canada,” IRCC wrote to him on May 31, 2024.
"Your misrepresentation led decision makers to believe that you had met the residence requirements for citizenship, when it appears you had not.”
The government said it had referred the case to the Federal Court, which has the final say on whether citizenship was obtained by “false representation or fraud or by knowingly concealing material circumstances”.
A Toronto immigration lawyer representing Tahawwur Rana, also known as Tahawwur Hussain Rana, has appealed the decision, arguing it was unfair and violated his rights, the Global News report said.
A hearing related to the revocation was held in Federal Court last week.
Government lawyers on December 19 asked the court for permission to withhold national security information from the case.
An immigration department spokesperson told Global News that cancelling citizenship for misrepresentation was “an important tool for maintaining the integrity of Canadian citizenship”.
To ensure fairness, the Federal Court makes the final decision in such cases, Mary Rose Sabater said.
"The Government does not take the revocation of citizenship lightly.”
She said she could not provide the number of such revocations as the department did not track them, but a Global News review found only three such decisions in the past decade.
(With inputs from agencies)
