(CNN) -- The man who disguised himself as an elderly passenger on an Air Canada flight is an "ordinary citizen" from China who probably used a smuggling ring to obtain false documents and arrange the plan, his lawyer said Monday.
"There is a worldwide network of people who make their living smuggling people to other countries and that appears what occurred here," Lee Rankin, a Vancouver, British Columbia, immigration attorney told CNN.
The man, an Asian in his early 20s, boarded the Air Canada flight from Hong Kong on October 29 wearing an elaborate head mask of an elderly man, according to a confidential alert that had been issued by the Canadian Border Services Agency. He took off the disguise in a restroom during the flight, and was met by Canadian authorities after the plane landed in Vancouver.
The man, who requested refugee protection, was being held in a Vancouver jail pending an immigration hearing Monday, Rankin said.
He said the man, whose name has not been disclosed, is from a rural area in Fujian, which is in southeast China. Rankin, who was appointed by the court to represent him, said he spoke with him in jail last week.
CNN
