'The white men will use you': Charles Taylor's brother-in-law

Cindor Reeves risked his life to help end the bloody reign of his brother-in-law, Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, but it threatens to cost him refugee status in Canada and to wrench him from his wife and children.

Since January he's been living under the threat of deportation. He told Postmedia News he would be applying to the Federal Court of Canada this week for leave to appeal the Immigration and Refugee Board's decision to reject his claim for refugee status.

For Reeves, it's bitter recompense for risking his life to bring Taylor before the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Having escaped what he calls Taylor's vengeance by fleeing to Canada in 2006, he said he now feels like Canada has turned its back on him.

"We have a saying in Africa, 'The white men will use you, get what they want from you and then they are done with you,'" Reeves said.

Taylor came to power in Liberia after a bloody civil war that left 200,000 dead. He is accused of extending his power by engaging in the blood diamond trade with the Revolutionary United Front in neighbouring Sierra Leone ' a group that was known for recruiting child soldiers and forcing people to mine the diamonds that financed the decade-long civil war.

Reeves said he was Taylor's eyes and ears in the blood diamond trade coming out of Sierra Leone, and all the while conspired to bring Taylor down.

Reeves documented every weapons delivery, meeting, person, diamond and crime related to his brother-in-law ' evidence that he handed over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2002. They formed the basis of the case against Taylor, who is now on trial in The Hague accused of war crimes including murder, rape, mutilation and conscription of child soldiers during Sierra Leone's civil war.

"I was living good. I gave up everything because I thought I was doing the right thing," Reeves said.

Building a case against his brother-in-law was dangerous, and after an arrest and an assassination attempt, Reeves and his immediate family fled, eventually landing in Canada, where they claimed refugee status.

Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board accepted in January the claims of his wife and two children, but rejected Reeves' application because of his association with Taylor and the RUF ' the same association that enabled him to be a key player in the quest to bring justice to West Africa.

If he is deported to Liberia, Reeves said he will be killed.

That's a decision that should be reconsidered according to Alan White, former chief of investigations with the UN-backed special court, and David Crane, a former prosecutor at the special court.

"This isn't a man that has blood on his hands," said White. "Respectfully, I would ask that they reconsider based on the totality of the circumstances. I feel strongly that the international community owes this man a great debt of gratitude for what he did."

Crane said the fact that Reeves co-operated with the special court shouldn't erase his past or mean automatic citizenship, but Canada has to realize he will be killed if he returns.

"If they send him back to Liberia they are signing his death warrant," he said. "I want for them to consider all that he has done, the impact he had on justice for West Africa and look at how is conducting himself in Canada and allow him in Canada as a political refugee."

Both men also said Reeves was not paid for any of the information, nor did he ever ask for anything except protection for his family.

Reeves said he spent four years tracking diamonds and weapons shipments going through he country. The chance to expose his brother-in-law came when Taylor asked him to tour around with reporters from the Washington Post. Reeves handed his cache of evidence to the journalists.

When the articles were published Taylor started getting suspicious, said Reeves.

"Things were closing in around me. Taylor was killing people. He was eliminating witnesses," he said.

Reeves said he was then arrested; his wife, Precious, was arrested and beaten. With the help of bribes, they both fled to Ghana in 2002.

In Ghana, White contacted Reeves and told him a hit squad was in town to assassinate them.

The court spirited the family to Amsterdam in January 2003. They lived in the Dutch city for a year before they were transferred to Germany.

In Germany, the family would make the tough decisions that would lead them to Canada. Reeves said that by 2005 the police stopped bringing the family food and financial support, saying that the special court had lost contact and was no longer footing the bills.

"We had some fiscal challenges and he got caught up in that situation. This is not the first individual the court has done that too," said White.

Not able to work in Germany and facing death threats from Taylor's associates, the family booked a flight to Canada.

When they arrived in August 2006, Reeves said he was welcomed to Toronto by the Canadian Border Services Agency with handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit. He said he was held in Toronto West Detention Centre for three months. He still reports to the agency every two weeks.

Precious and Reeves opened a hair salon in a Toronto suburb. Now they are both waiting to see if the Federal Court will keep their family together.

Reeves said he doesn't have much hope when it comes to winning his case, instead he's trying to come to terms with an eventual return to Liberia.

"I don't regret doing what I did. If it costs my life, so be it."