Foreign Affairs flies into action on the Zahra Kazemi case: “We are concerned that a very negative story might be published on the basis of the above allegations.”
By Michael Petrou - Monday, July 27, 2009 - 11 Comments
Last November, I published a story about an Iranian exile by the name of Behnam Vafaseresht who claimed to have been jailed at the Evin Prison in Tehran at the same time that Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was held and eventually murdered there. Vafaseresht said he had information implicating Saeed Mortazavi, the prosecutor general of Tehran, in Kazemi’s death.
This is significant because in 2006, then foreign affairs minister Peter Mackay said of Mortazavi: “Mark my words. This individual is on notice. If there is any way Canada can bring this person to justice, we’ll do it.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper also claimed he had asked Germany to detain Mortazavi should he set foot in the country so that he could be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”
Vafaseresht told Maclean’s that he met with Canadian embassy officials in Ankara in 2006 and 2007 and offered to testify any court case that Canada might launch against Mortazavi. He said Canadian officials, though they interviewed him in detail, were not interested in his help. He sought refuge in Germany and hasn’t heard from Canada since.
At the time, Foreign Affairs would neither confirm nor deny that any meetings with Vafaseresht took place. I therefore filed an access-to-information request about the alleged meetings and received a partial response last week, eight months after filing it – which makes Foreign Affairs’ response time lightning fast compared to the transparency-phobic folks at the Canadian International Development Agency. Continue…
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Foreign Affairs: pursuing all channels to protect Canadians, as long as it doesn’t involve leaving the embassy compound
By Michael Petrou - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 10:17 PM - 2 Comments
Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout has been held captive in Somalia since August. In January, her Somali colleague Abdifatah Mohammad Elmi, was released. The CBC’s David McGuffin tracked him down in Kenya, where he revealed that no one from the Canadian government has been in touch since his release.
Foreign Affairs, as per usual, said it is pursuing the case through all appropriate channels but offered no details. Apparently it feels that talking to the man who spent some six months with Lindhout and her kidnappers wouldn’t be useful or appropriate.
I wish this suprised me. Unfortunately, this chasm between Canada’s rhetoric and action when it comes to protecting its citizens abroad is not new. As I wrote last year, despite making several chest-thumping statements about how it wants to bring the Iranian government officials who tortured and murdered Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi to justice, Canada refused the help of an Iranian dissident who had first-hand knowledge of her abuse, and hasn’t bothered to talk to Shahram Azam, the doctor who examined her and now lives here.
