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Nine months after the Supreme Court of Canada deemed Leon Mugesera a war criminal and ordered him deported for helping incite the genocide that ravaged Rwanda, the exiled ethnic Hutu hardliner remains in Canada.

The Quebec City resident's expulsion has been put on hold while the federal government determines whether his life could be in danger in Rwanda, a Canada Border Services Agency spokesman confirmed yesterday.

Members of the local Rwandan community -- who have closely monitored Mr. Mugesera's 10-year legal battle to stay in the country and celebrated last June's Supreme Court decision to remove him -- were outraged to learn he remains in Canada.

"It's hurtful to the community that he is still here," said Paulin Nteziryayo, vice-president of PAGE Rwanda, a group that looks for the authors of the 1994 bloodbath hiding among the streams of refugees to Canada. "It was supposed to be all over and he's still here," Mr. Nteziryayo said yesterday from Montreal. "It shows there's no point. [The Supreme Court ruling] means nothing."

Sergio Karas, a Toronto immigration lawyer, said Mr. Mugesera's situation, while disappointing, is not surprising.

"This basically indicates a much larger problem," he said. "It draws attention to how bankrupt the refugee process is in Canada, where individuals who are ordered deported for having committed heinous crimes whether inside or outside Canada can continue to linger."

A former university lecturer, Mr. Mugesera arrived in Canada via Spain in 1992, shortly after delivering a speech in the bush to Hutu militants in which he called ethnic Tutsis "cockroaches."

The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that Mr. Mugesera was inadmissable to Canada for his hateful oratory, which it said contributed to the massacre of Tutsis before and during the 1994 bloodbath that claimed 800,000 lives.

"Anyone whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut your neck," Mr. Mugesera said in the speech rebroadcast at the height of the 1994 genocide. Mr. Mugesera has proclaimed his innocence -- likening himself to Jesus being crucified -- and he begged to be tried here in Canada for crimes against humanity so he can clear his name.

Canada first began deportation proceedings against Mr. Mugesera in 1995. The government abandoned efforts to remove his wife and five children.

After the Supreme Court ruling last year, Mr. Mugesera had the option of applying for a pre-removal risk assessment, a review that is carried out by senior officials at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

"Everyone has a right to this recourse," said Robert Gervais, a spokesman for the Quebec division of the Canada Border Services Agency, the government arm charged with enforcing removal orders. "Once a person presents a request to that effect, we must consider it."

Mr. Gervais said he was unable to comment on Mr. Mugesera's case other than to confirm he is still in Canada, citing privacy rules once a case moves from the public sphere of the justice system to the confidential administrative realm.