Court dates set for repeat offender

Three alleged assaults at the Okanagan Correctional Centre will go under the microscope Jan. 7 in B.C. Supreme Court in Penticton.

Afshin Maleki Ighani is accused of stabbing two fellow inmates last year and a jail guard earlier this year. His lawyer confirmed Monday his client’s wish to be tried for all three incidents on the same day early next year.

Ighani, who has since been moved to the North Fraser Pretrial Centre in Port Coquitlam, is also due to stand trial in December on a slew of charges that landed him in jail in the first place.

Those counts include firearms, assault and kidnapping charges related to an alleged crime spree in April 2017 that began in Oliver and ended with a police chase in Princeton.

He had been facing a charge of attempted murder in relation to that chain of events, but that count was dropped when the alleged victim died of unrelated causes.

Ighani, who normally resides in Oliver, is no stranger to the Penticton courthouse, where he has appeared many times over the past 15 years on assorted drug, weapons and assault charges that prompted efforts to remove him from the country.

He was first ordered deported in 2002 after being convicted of possessing a restricted firearm. Ighani fought that order, however, and was granted a reprieve with strict conditions, including that he not commit any further criminal offences, according to a decision of the appeal division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

That reprieve was revoked in July 2007, according to the same decision, after Ighani was convicted following trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Penticton and sentenced to 42 months in prison for eight offences in connection with a drug bust in Oliver.

He wasn’t deported that time, though, because he was facing the death penalty in his native Iran, according to a source with knowledge of the matter who was not permitted to speak publicly about it.