Iranian gets fresh refugee hope
Former police officer accused of complicity in war crimes claims he faces death for religious beliefs
Canada wrongly rejected the refugee claim of a lieutenant colonel in the Iranian National Police on the spurious grounds of guilt by association, and must now hold a new hearing on his claim that he is marked for death as an apostate for converting to Christianity.
This is the result of a new Federal Court ruling on Mohammadreza Habibi, 64, of Thornhill, Ont., who claims to be the victim of persecution by a murderous theocracy, but is seen by the government of Canada as complicit in Iran’s crimes against humanity, which include torture and execution.
In Canada’s view, Habibi’s conversion story — from his ancestral Christianity roots, to his story of a raid on an underground church in Iran, and his baptism in a Toronto area lake — is little more than a cover story, too little, too late to absolve him of responsibility.
But this position, taken by civil servants on behalf of the previous government, was legally flawed. In granting Habibi a new hearing, a Federal Court judge found Canada’s refugee board “simply concur(red) with the Minister’s conclusions,” without properly applying the law on complicity in war crimes.
And because the government’s evidence against Habibi — stacks of reports on Iranian atrocities from Amnesty International, academic journals and the popular press, but nothing on him in particular other than his testimony — fails to establish he played a “significant and knowing” part in crimes against humanity, the denial of refugee protection cannot stand.
So those two visions of Habibi — war criminal or victim of religious persecution — will again be tested against each other on the murky terrain of international refugee law. In the balance hangs not only his fate in Canada, but also that of his wife Maliheh Khoshadel, 57.
She testified she followed his lead into an underground Christian church near Tehran. After her husband fled to Canada and it was raided by police, she managed to destroy their stock of scripture just before she was twice taken from her home, blindfolded, for interrogation.
“It was the forces of Pasdaran and the revolutionaries,” she testified, referring to the Revolutionary Guard and its subordinate militias, which enforce Islamic social order against foreign or blasphemous influence. Canada considers its extraterritorial wing, the Quds Force, a terrorist entity.
“They came to the house and they said, ‘Your husband has changed religion and we are looking for him,’ ” she said.
Khoshadel arrived in Canada on a visa to visit their daughter, and filed for refugee status with Habibi in 2012. At their suburban bungalow this week, both declined to comment on the advice of their lawyer, Jared Will.
Court records, however, tell the story of a career policeman who joined the force under the Shah and was suspended for three months in the 1979 revolution as some fellow officers were shot in the streets. He served for nearly three decades, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in Tabriz, near his ancestral homeland.
He said he was an “information collecting officer,” who later supervised lower ranking police, but never dealt with anything more serious than fraud, robbery, theft, and other common crimes. Questioned by a government lawyer, he denied involvement in any corporal punishments or transferring prisoners to the more feared elements of the Islamic republic, like the Basij militia, Komiteh Islamic committees, or the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
He said police changed, as older ones were replaced by younger, more zealous revolutionaries, whom he described as criminals.
“The older police officers, they did not agree with what (younger ones) were doing and they were trying to stop anything that they thought it was not their duty to do,” Habibi testified. “One of the reasons that they agreed with my retirement, it was just actually to get rid of me.”
He said he asked to resign a few times, but was refused.
Raised as a Muslim, Habibi said his 2006 conversion arose from an interest in his Christian ancestry, and a disapproval of aspects of Islam.
“From when I was a small kid, I … had difficulty accepting this religion (Islam) because of some of the violence I saw within … within this religion, I guess,” he said.
But it was only in retirement, running a bookshop, he met Christians and joined an underground church, called Besharaht in Karaj, near Tehran.
A dozen or so men and a few women would rent an orchard storehouse, and usually meet on Friday. They would read scripture, and compare subjects in Christianity and Islam, the differing messages of Jesus and Mohammed on questions such as submission, salvation, goodwill.
After the church was raided by police, Habibi left Iran within days on a visa he already had, as his daughter lived in Canada. His son fled to Germany, where he was accepted as a refugee.
In Canada, Habibi and his wife joined a Persian Christian Fellowship and were baptized in an Ontario lake in the summer of 2013, though the minister’s counsel asked why they took a course for “new believers.”
Deportation back to Iran is a real possibility if the case goes against him again, his lawyer said. There are other powerful effects of the accusation of complicity in atrocities, which he said are “tossed around very lightly in the immigration law context.”
“I don’t think it’s hard to imagine the sort of stigma and shame that goes along with being branded as a war criminal by the Canadian government,” Will said. “They basically are relying on generic evidence.”
For his part, Habibi said he fears unfair judgment and capital punishment were he to return.
“(Iranian authorities) consider me an apostate. So once you are apostate they won’t listen to you,” he said.
“They believe that they are the representative of God on Earth … that’s what they have interpreted Shariah as anybody who’s considered as apostate, the punishment is death.”
“The older police officers, they did not agree with what( younger ones) were doing and they were trying to stop anything that they thought it was not their duty to do.
MOHAMMADREZA HABIBI FORMER LIEUTENANT COLONEL, IRANIAN NATIONAL POLICE