A North Vancouver man with previous convictions for assault and drug possession is scheduled to appear again in court this week, charged with the murder of a convicted drug trafficker.

Babak Najafi-Chaghabouri, 27, is charged along with Surrey’s Charles Anthony Leslie, 31, for the kidnapping and murder of Vancouver’s Ronak Wagad.

Police say the two men abducted Wagad from his Vancouver apartment Feb. 23. His remains were found near a highway exit east of Chilliwack on July 8.

Police say all three men were “involved in the mid-level drug trade.”

Najafi-Chaghabouri also faces deportation after he violated the conditions of stay granted by a special tribunal of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Initially the Iranian refugee, who emigrated to Canada in 2001, faced a deportation order after committing six violent criminal offences between 2003 and 2007.

Those included a North Vancouver stabbing at a Persian restaurant. At the 2007 sentencing for that assault, court records show a judge ordered Najafi-Chaghabouri undergo counselling for substance abuse and anger management.

In the initial IRB deportation appeal decision announced Feb. 16, 2009 – one week before Wagad’s alleged abduction by Najafi-Chaghabouri and his co-accused – tribunal member Renee Miller found that Najafi-Chaghabouri was making “efforts towards rehabilitation.”

She noted he had pled guilty to his offences, attended treatment and therapy programs, attaining a certificate in a violence prevention course.

She also argued that his violent criminal record “was not a factor in his favour” in the appealed deportation. Miller found that Najafi-Chaghabouri showed “minimal” evidence of employment and that “it is hard to see how he could have supported himself on $3,500 per year.”

He was granted a two-year stay before his case was revisited.

“He (Najafi-Chaghabouri) had a deportation order and what that (tribunal) member thought of or considered at that time was to give him a chance, really, to stay clean for a certain amount of time and the removal would be looked at again in two years,” explained Paula Faber, spokesperson for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

“It (the deportation order) wasn’t dismissed, it was just put on hold.”

On June 10, Najafi-Chaghabouri was convicted in North Vancouver court of assault and weapons possession – of a knife and an imitation firearm – for the purpose of committing an offence.

The public safety and emergency preparedness minister found June 29 that Najafi-Chaghabouri’s “serious criminality” should cancel his stay of deportation.

He was arrested in connection to Wagad’s alleged murder on July 17.

A representative from Canada Border Services Agency could not be reached by The Outlook’s deadline for comment about the details of Najafi-Chaghabouri’s impending deportation.