Man with alleged ties to Iran martyrs’ group can’t be deported
Man with alleged ties to Iran martyrs’ group can’t be deported.
TORONTO — Iran is refusing to allow Canada to deport a member of an Iranian terrorist group who was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson airport while carrying a recruitment letter from the “Martyrdom Lovers’ Headquarters” in Tehran.
Gholam Reza Ameli has been held in Canadian custody since he arrived in Toronto more than three years ago; the Immigration and Refugee Board says he is a commander of an Iranian terrorist organization and a danger to the public.
The IRB ordered the government to deport Mr. Ameli but immigration officials have been unable to remove him because, while Iran admits he is an Iranian citizen, it refuses to cooperate with the Canada Border Services Agency on the case.
The source of the problem is Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to a memo by Brock Mitchell, an immigration enforcement officer in Toronto. “They will not give permission for the embassy in Ottawa to issue a travel document for Mr. Ameli,” he wrote. “They did not provide a reason for the refusal.”
The CBSA headquarters has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs to negotiate with the Iranian government over the matter. Because Mr. Ameli does not have a passport, he cannot be deported until Iran gives him a travel document.
Christine Csversko, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, would not comment on the case but said it was “deeply troubling anytime a foreign government refuses to issue travel documents to one of its citizens deemed inadmissible to Canada.” The Iranian embassy did not respond to interview requests.
“It’s concerning,” said Mark Holland, the Liberal public safety critic. “Canada shouldn’t be placed in that position, obviously. Tehran should be taking this individual back.
“We shouldn’t have to assume this responsibility for somebody who seems to have very clear links to a terrorist organization. It’s grossly unfair that that situation be dumped on our lap, so we’ve got to find a way for Tehran to take responsibility for their citizen.”
Ottawa and Tehran have been openly at odds in recent years over Iran’s nuclear program, support for terrorism and human rights issues such as the crackdown on reformist demonstrators and the killing of Canadian Zahra Kazemi in an Iranian prison.
This latest diplomatic dispute has not been publicly reported until now. It concerns the fate of a 40-year-old Iranian who flew to Canada in October 2006 and made a refugee claim while carrying a letter from “Martyrdom Lovers’ Headquarters” in Tehran.
Under a logo of a raised rifle, the letter was addressed to Mr. Ameli and assigned him a “martyrdom code.” It advised him to read what the Koran says about martyrdom, conduct physical training, study “the enemies of Islam” and “submit your plan of actions for neutralizing and repelling them.” The return address was a Tehran postal box.
“By registration in the Martyrdom Armies, you proved that you could be a genuine crusader of God and, in fact, you have taken your first strong step in the battlefields of the friends of our dear leader for the sake of God,” it read. “Therefore, to join the Martyrdom Lovers’ Headquarters means registering for martyrdom and from now on, your heroic name is registered in the organization of the martyrdom army of the province of your residence.”
The BBC and Agence France Presse reported in 2005 that an advertisement in a conservative Iranian publication had called for volunteers to join Martyrdom Lovers. The group’s commander was Mohammad Reza Jafari, the AFP reported. The letter seized in Canada was signed by a man of the same name.
In the 2007 book, Iran’s Military Forces and Warfighting Capability, authors Anthony Cordesman and Martin Kleiber, quoted Mr. Jafari saying that: “members of the martyrdom-seeking garrisons across the world have been put on alert so that if the Islamic Republic of Iran receives the smallest threat, the American and Israeli strategic interests will be burnt down everywhere.”
Several experts who examined the Martyrdom Lovers letter at the request of the National Post said Iran’s martyrdom armies were largely propaganda tools meant to deter the West from attacking Iran. The experts were uncertain of the letter’s significance or even whether it was genuine.
“It can be authentic,” said Mohsen Sazegara, a former high-ranking Iranian official and a founder of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who is now a pro-democracy activist in the United States.
“It can be from a small group,” he said. “The ideas and suggestions in this letter are very childish but it can be from some of these groups because some of them, they have very childish ideas.”
He said while a small radical group might have been seeking martyrs, they would not have had the official sanction of the government of Iran, which recognizes the dire consequences it would face over such actions. He said if Iran wanted to conduct terrorist attacks abroad, it would not use such volunteers but would hire or recruit locals.
“Especially now, five years after this letter, I’m sure that the people who have written this letter, or the group who thought like that, I’m sure that they are not in this business anymore.”
Ali Alfoneh, the author of a Middle East Forum paper on Iran’s suicide brigades, said such groups are mostly a deterrent meant to chasten both the West and domestic reformers.
He said the letter could also be a fraud circulated by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the armed Iranian group that has been fighting to overthrow the government, said Mr. Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The letter could be genuine, but the entire affair is most likely psy-ops, either of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which tries to intimidate the Western public and change calculation of Western military planners, or psy-ops of Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization which tries to depict the Islamic Republic in the worst imaginable light.”
Before arriving in Canada, Mr. Ameli was a commander of a group called Mahdaviyat, which in 1999 car-bombed Ali Razini, a senior judicial officer in Tehran, leaving him paralyzed and killing his bodyguard.
Mr. Ameli said he was not involved in the attack but that he later fled to the United Arab Emirates. When he returned to Iran, he said he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death for his activities.
The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment, he said. He said he was tortured “extensively” while in Iranian custody but that 30 months into his sentence, he was issued a temporary pass and escaped to Turkey, where he was again arrested.
“When I was deported back to Iran, I came to Tehran clandestinely and I contacted my wife, and my wife said that, ‘We have received a letter from this place and it’s very important,'” he testified at his immigration hearing. “So I received it from her and then I had it on me when I fled to Turkey and later to this country.”
He said he gave the Martyrdom Lovers letter to Canadian immigration officers voluntarily. The CBSA subsequently filed it as evidence to bolster their deportation case against him, but Mr. Ameli denied he was a member of the Martyrdom group.
“No individual with a sound mind will travel with such a document with the purpose of coming here and submitting and saying, ‘Here I am. I’m a terrorist, please accept it,'” Mr. Ameli argued.
“Since at the time I was a fugitive, this meant to serve as a trap that could get me back or lure me back, and they had simply told my mother that, ‘Have him accept this document and then we make sure that he gets his amnesty and he will get released.’ This is what I and my family believe. We believe that this was meant to serve as an encouragement, a way to entrap me.”
At his immigration hearing, the CBSA argued that Mr. Ameli belonged to both Mahdaviyat and Martyrdom Lovers. “The nature of this organization is clear,” the CBSA official said of Martyrdom Lovers. “It exists to defend Islam and to destroy Israel by making use of martyrs.”
According to transcripts of the hearings, the CBSA was puzzled over why Mr. Ameli would travel with such a “damaging” document but suggested it was because it “had great meaning” to him.
The IRB ruled that Martyrdom Lovers existed “and is apparently an organization that was created by the president of Iran. The goal is the training of individuals of [sic] suicide attacks and to promote the Islamic religion through terror.”
That view was repeated last October, when the IRB ruled that, “After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005 he formed the Lovers of Martyrdom. And while Mr. Ameli was away, a recruiting letter went to his home.” It added that Martyrdom Lovers was “an agent of the state, and that the president was presumably sending these recruiting notices to a large number of people.”
The IRB was not satisfied that Mr. Ameli was a “member” of Martyrdom Lovers but it ruled he was a “key member” of Mahdaviyat and ordered his deportation for belonging to an organization that had engaged in terrorism.
“You have signed a death sentence. Thank you,” Mr. Ameli responded.
He initially refused to cooperate with his removal but last August he said he would willingly return to Iran. He is being held northeast of Toronto at the Central East Correctional Centre. Hearings to decide whether he should remain in custody were scheduled to begin in Toronto next Friday.
National Post
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