HIV-positive gay man who's been denied refugee status is "terrified to return" to El Salvador

Time is running out for an HIV-positive gay man who's been denied refugee status. Joaquín Ramirez is scheduled for deportation to El Salvador — where he says he'll face torture and death — on Thu, May 15.

Ramirez, who came to Toronto as a delegate for the International AIDS Conference in August 2006, says he's afraid that if he's sent back he'll face violence at the hands of three federal police officers who he claims beat, raped and robbed him in a sugarcane field more than two years ago. Since the alleged attack Ramirez says the three men have visited his family in El Salvador threatening to kill him because, they claim, he infected at least one of them.

"I am sure that I will be put through torture," says Ramirez through an interpreter, "and I am sure that I will be assassinated if I go back. There have been four men who have come to my sister's home in a car and have parked outside her house. They have asked my little niece if I had come back yet and they have also called my sister and told her that they were going to kill me.  Terrified to return