This story is from British Columbia yesterday:
VANCOUVER, B.C. – A man accused of killing his business partner, two of his lovers and his step-daughter will be in court Monday for the start of a trial that could match the marathon proceedings in another serial murder case.
There are expected to be 200 witnesses called during Charles Kembo’s trial and the hearing is expected to last for most of a year.
Kembo is facing four counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing the three women and his business partner. He was arrested in July 2005 and it’s taken more than four years for the case to come in front of jury.
He is charged with murdering the following:
Kembo is accused of first murdering his wife Margaret Kembo, who vanished sometime between the end of December, 2002 and beginning of January, 2003.
In November 2003, Kembo’s friend and business partner Ardon Samuel, 38, was also slain.
One year later, the body of Kembo’s 55-year-old girlfriend Sui Yin Ma was found in a slough in Richmond, B.C.
Twenty-one-year-old Rita Yeung, Kembo’s step-daughter, was found dead in July 2005 in Richmond.
We would call Kembo an asylee in the US but apparently in Canada he is considered a “government sponsored convention refugee.” Just like so many others he was ordered deported but never left. If the government of Canada had followed through and put him on a plane, perhaps those four would be alive today.
Kembo was known as Charlos Mathews Gwazah when he landed at Pearson International Airport in September 1989 from the landlocked southeast African country of Malawi.
He became a government-sponsored convention refugee, which allows a person to stay in Canada if they have a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion or nationality.
Refugees selected for resettlement to Canada are financially supported by the government, after often being forced to flee their home country because of extreme hardship.
A Canadian visa officer must decide if the potential sponsored refugee meets the requirements of Canada’s resettlement program.
Immigration and Refugee Board documents showed over the next three years he also made refugee claims under three different names.
He was ordered deported in 1994, but as a landed immigrant had a right to appeal the order and did so. He abandoned the appeal in 1996.