yesterday when he was deported to Switzerland.

Gopinath Chandresagaram left Bermuda on last night's British Airways flight to London after Immigration authorities received a Swiss "free pass'' allowing him passage through the UK.

A last-minute chat with local friends was cut short when Chandresagaram spotted a Royal Gazette photographer approaching and slipped into the Airport Police Station. It was in that station he was arrested on March 19 after being denied entry into the US when he gave an Immigration officer "unsatisfactory answers''.

Chandresagaram later pleaded guilty to using three fake documents to enter Bermuda.

Through a German speaking interpreter he told a magistrate: "If I am sent back to Sri Lanka, as soon as I left the airport I would be killed.'' Later, then-Immigration Minister Quinton Edness said his department was making arrangements to deport him to Sri Lanka. Government later did an about-face and contacted Swiss authorities where his father has asylum and his mother is a refugee.

"Gopi'', as he had become known to his local friends, had his 18th birthday at the Co-Ed Facility and was later sentenced to six weeks in prison -- effectively time served.

Since his release he has waited for final word from the Swiss Office for Refugees on whether he could return to his former status as refugee.