Refugee goes into hiding

A Roma refugee terrified of being sent back to Hungary remained in hiding yesterday while his distraught wife and teenaged son appealed to the federal justice minister to reconsider his extradition.
Ottawa has ordered Adolf Horvath, 51, deported to stand trial on what his family claims are trumped up fraud and extortion charges motivated by his ethnic origins.
Fearing extradition was imminent, Horvath vanished five weeks ago.
“I miss my dad,” Adam, 13, a Grade 8 student in Toronto, said as tears streamed down his face. “I have no future without my dad. I can’t live without him. If he goes to Hungary, he might be killed and I don’t want that.”
Horvath has reason to be afraid of going back.
He was repeatedly assaulted and threatened in Hungary, where abuse of Roma — sometimes referred to as Gypsies — is common. In one attack at home, skinheads stabbed and beat him badly in front of his horrified wife Erika, 36, and Adam, who was then just 2 1/2.
Horvath fled Hungary for Canada in 1999. His wife and son were granted refugee status and Canadian immigration authorities in 2004 decided he faced “more than a mere possibility of persecution” based on his Roma ethnicity.