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Vancouver

For months, Li Xue kept asking her husband what was wrong.

He was depressed and constantly nagged her. It seemed she could do nothing right. Then a friend told her that her husband, Gao Shan, was a fugitive. He was wanted by authorities in China for allegedly embezzling nearly 1 billion yuan from the Bank of China in Harbin, Heilongjiang province , where he was a senior branch manager.

Ms Li had emigrated to Canada ahead of her husband, along with their daughter, Lilly, now 17.

Gao arrived on December 31, 2004. Chinese authorities issued an arrest warrant a month later. By then, the family had attained permanent residency in Canada.

Nevertheless, Gao was recently arrested by Canadian authorities, on February 16, because of alleged inaccuracies on the family's immigration documents.

At an immigration hearing last week, Canadian authorities said Gao deliberately omitted that he had worked at the Bank of China. Gao maintains the omission was inadvertent.

With his daughter at one side and his wife at the other, Gao seemed relaxed. He smiled, sitting behind his lawyer. Ms Li leaned against him and later, Gao kissed his daughter on the cheek.

Getting arrested may have been the best thing to happen to Gao.

He had been under surveillance for at least a year by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Whether he is still being watched is not known. But what is clear is that Gao is a free man.

He has been released on bond while the case is being heard, and he has retained one of Canada's best-known immigration lawyers.

His Toronto-based lawyer, Lorne Waldman, recently represented Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who won C$10.5 million (HK$70 million) in compensation and C$1 million in legal costs from the Canadian government after he was detained by the US in 2002, flown to Syria and interrogated for nearly a year about alleged links to al-Qaeda.

Representing Gao, Mr Waldman immediately requested an adjournment until next month. He argued that the Canadian government was abusing its power and was trying to send Gao back to China for dubious reasons.

Canada and China do not have an extradition treaty, and Mr Waldman argued that the misstatement on Gao's immigration documents was merely a pretext so Canadian officials could return the suspect and please their Chinese counterparts.

Mr Waldman said his client would face the death penalty if returned to China.

'You can't send people back to a judicial system like China's,' he said. Chinese officials, however, have said that the death penalty would not be applied in the event Gao was found guilty.

Mr Waldman was granted an adjournment and will now try to persuade a judge that Canadian officials abused their powers in their attempt to deport Gao.

The process could take months, if not years, for all appeals to be exhausted.

As a fugitive, Gao's grip on freedom was tenuous. With his arrest, he has entered the Canadian justice system, which is not only open and transparent, but also glacial in its progression.

Undoubtedly, Gao and Mr Waldman are counting that what promises to be a long fight will pay off in the end.

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