There has been a man held in a maximum-security prison in Canada for the past 6 years, and nobody knows who he is at all. The man refuses to identify himself to the authorities and as a result, has been stuck in legal limbo.
The immigration detention hearing never started very well at all when the man asking to be released from prison was politely asked to identify himself. He has told multiple Canadian officials that he doesn’t care when asked who he is, and all he has told them is that he wishes for this whole process to stop. Canadian officials, on the other hand, do not want to release him, because until they know his identity and nationality they cannot deport him.
Simply referred to as The Unknown Prisoner, he has been serving time since April 9, 2013, and most of it has been in a maximum-security prison, this puts him in the same sort of length of prison time as a manslaughter sentence. Though the man has never been convicted of any crimes in Canada.
The amazing thing is that nobody knows anything about the man, he has advised that he is a French citizen by the name of Herman Emmanuel Fankem – but Canadian government officials seem certain this is not the case. They have had years of international investigating, that has gone across 11 different countries and so far the mystery around who this man remains.
Fankem, if that is indeed his name, arrived from a flight from Cuba in 2012. At customs, he used a French passport and advised he was visiting as a family friend had died and he was there for the funeral. This was not the first time he had been to Canada, and because he had valid hotel reservations and $3,000 in a bank account, along with a return ticket – he was granted a 10 day visitor’s visa. The problem was as authorities later learned, Fankem never did leave, he was arrested six months later in Toronto for a black money scam that stole over $400,000 from a Canadian Citizen. As soon as the police found out he was a visitor, they simply called the immigration department to deport him.
This is where the trouble started, they could not identify the man, nobody appears to be able to. And Fankem, refuses to cooperate in any way, never going to any of his hearings simply accusing them of kidnapping him and asking multiple times to face the criminal charges on trial to clear his name.
