A Canadian court has ordered the federal government of Iran to pay $200 million to a British Columbia mechanic who was branded an ‘infidel’ and tortured for criticizing the Islamic regime.
In a choice obtained by Global News, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded $100 million in compensation and one other $100 million in punitive damages to Zahed Haftlang.
The court said Haftlang, an Iranian refugee who fled to Canada in 2001, merited the unusually large sum due to the “years of mistreatment” and “lifetime of mental trauma” he suffered.
Justice Lee Akazaki wrote that while a single judgment won’t deter Iran’s abuses, the “accumulation of harm awards, often executed against Iran’s frozen foreign assets, has some effect.”
Although foreign governments are generally immune from Canada’s civil courts, Justice Akazaki ruled that Iran’s torture of Haftlang was motivated by the regime’s politics, religion and beliefs.
Consequently, it amounted to “terrorist activity” akin to staging attacks on foreign soil intended to silence opposition to the regime, so Iran didn’t profit from state immunity, the judge ruled.
“Iran is due to this fact liable to Mr. Haftlang and answerable to a civil judgment by this court for his loss brought on by the acts committed against him,” in keeping with the 13-page decision handed down on May 29.
The choice is the most recent against Iran by a Canadian court under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allows those impacted by terrorism to sue state sponsors of the groups that harmed them.
It marked the primary time a court in Canada had found that terrorist activity included Iran’s atrocities against its own residents, and will potentially open the door for a lot of more such lawsuits.
Haftlang’s lawyer, Mark Arnold, said it would be the largest sum ever awarded to a person in Canada. The Ontario court earlier awarded $100 million in damages to the estates of six passengers killed when the regime shot down Ukraine Airlines flight 752 on Jan. 8, 2020.
Zahed Haftlang, seen here within the documentary ‘My Enemy, My Brother,’ was tortured by the Iranian regime and now lives in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
YouTube
The choice stems from abuses committed within the Nineties, but the regime has continued to mistreat opponents, most recently in January with the mass killing of anti-regime demonstrators.
While the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran in February initially raised hopes of regime change, that seems unlikely as U.S. President Donald Trump struggles to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
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Haftlang is now a Canadian citizen and works as an auto mechanic in North Vancouver, B.C. But before he resettled in Canada 25 years ago, he was recruited into the Iranian military at age 13.
On the time he enlisted as a toddler soldier, in 1981, Iran was at war with neighbouring Iraq. Haftlang was captured by Iraqi forces and held prisoner until the conflict ended, at which point he was sent home.
But Iranian authorities viewed him with suspicion, in keeping with the court decision. At his debriefing, he criticized the Iranian regime, prompting authorities to call him an infidel and send him to prison.
Throughout the two years he was held captive, Iranian police and prison guards beat him, attached objects to his genitals, electrocuted him and left him with head trauma, the court said.
Released in 1993, he went to work on government-operated cargo ships, where he got into arguments with those the judge described as “ideologically adherent crew members.”
Aboard the ship Iran Mazandaran, he insulted Iran’s Supreme Leader. Fearing the captain would report him, he jumped ship in Vancouver’s English Bay, and a kayaker helped him to shore.
Now married with two children, he sued the Iranian government in 2024 with the assistance of Arnold, a Toronto lawyer with a protracted record of successful civil court actions against the Islamic Republic.
Before the court could rule on the case, it first had to choose whether Iran was immune from civil actions. Under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, Iran can’t claim immunity for acts of terrorism.
Justice Akazaki found that Iran’s torture of Haftlang amounted to terrorism since it arose from the choice that “he was an infidel worthy of control and isolation from Iranian society.”
The “revolutionary arm” of the Iranian regime that’s controlled by the Supreme Leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was answerable for Haftlang’s detention, the judge ruled.
“I also conclude that these revolutionary actors were driven by their suspicion of the returned prisoner of war due to his vocal dissent and the length of detention within the military prisons of Iraq,” the judge wrote.
“They branded him an ‘infidel’ and tortured him to condition him into loyalty to the Supreme Leader,” in keeping with the choice, which said he was tortured “to suppress any misgivings he can have harboured about his participation as an Iranian soldier.”
“He was an atypical person upset by the Iran to which he returned and was caught up in a paranoid regime’s cogs,” wrote the judge, who said what Haftlang endured was “no less an act of state terror than firing an ordnance right into a residential area.”
By passing laws lifting Iran’s immunity, Canada had “joined the chorus of countries requiring Iran to stop using violence and the specter of violence toward civilians as an instrument of foreign and domestic policy,” the judge added.
Along with the $200 million, the court awarded an extra $100,000 to Haftlang’s wife and $50,000 to his daughter for the “lack of guidance, care and companionship” brought on by the regime’s actions.
Canada severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012 and added Tehran to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Since then, terror victims have won several judgments against Iran within the Canadian courts.
To compensate them, Iran’s non-diplomatic assets in Canadian cities were sold off. The federal government views Tehran’s diplomatic properties, reminiscent of its Ottawa embassy constructing, as untouchable, but victims are searching for to alter that through the courts.
Iranian officials have expressed outrage over the lack of their Canadian properties and bank accounts, accusing Ottawa of “economic terrorism.” They’ve also threatened to seize Canadian ships in retaliation.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca