An Ontario court has ordered Iran to pay more than $500 million to a Canadian victim of torture by the regime, adding to the $200 million already awarded in a ruling announced this week.
In a decision issued on Thursday, the judge found that the Islamic Republic had to pay five percent interest on the damages already awarded to the victim.
Since the torture occurred in 1990, that amounts to 36 years of interest, or another $360 million, making Iran owe Zahed Haftlang $560 million.
According to Haftlang’s Toronto lawyer, Mark Arnold, that may be the largest amount ever awarded to a single individual by a Canadian civil court.
Arnold said he would be relaying the sentence to Iran’s supreme leader by email. If Iran does not pay, the price will continue to rise at a rate of four percent per year.
Under Canadian law, victims of terrorism are allowed to claim seized Iranian assets to pay reparations ordered by civil courts.
Tehran was not involved in the lawsuit filed by Haftlang, who came to Canada as a refugee in 2001 after being tortured for two years in an Iranian prison.
Zahed Haftlang, seen here in the documentary ‘My Enemy, My Brother,’ was tortured by the Iranian regime and now lives in BC’s Lower Mainland.
YouTube
His case is the latest under Canada’s Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allows those affected by Iran-backed terrorist groups to sue for compensation.
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Victims of terrorism have used the law to win several court judgments against Iran. In order to settle the judgments, Iran’s non-citizen assets were seized in Canada.
Victims can also track foreign assets owned by the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist group listed under Canadian law.
The judge in charge of Haftlang’s case found that the “revolutionary arm” of the Iranian regime, led by the supreme leader, was responsible for his torture.
An auto mechanic in North Vancouver, BC, Haftlang wrote about his past in a book I, the Immortal. Through his lawyer, he declined to comment on the court case.
A child soldier during the Iran-Iraq war, Haftlang was abducted by Iraqi forces and held hostage in 1990. When he returned to Iran, the authorities suspected him.
“He was an ordinary person who was offended by Iran and returned to it,” according to the Ontario court. “They called him an ‘unbeliever’ and tortured him to make him loyal to the Supreme Leader.”
When he was finally released, he worked on an Iranian cargo ship and went overboard in Vancouver’s English Bay. A local kayaker helped him to shore.
On May 29, an Ontario court ruled that Iran was guilty of torturing Haftlang because his torture was motivated by politics, religion and ideology.
It therefore amounted to terrorism, the court ruled. The decision means Iran will not be able to gain the immunity foreign governments often enjoy in Canadian courts.
The court’s decision greatly expanded the scope of violence covered under Canadian law to include acts committed by Iran against its own citizens.
Although the case focused on abuses committed in the 1990s, the regime continued to mistreat its opponents, such as anti-government protesters.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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