The Ontario court has ordered Iran to pay greater than $500 million to a Canadian tortured by the regime, adding to the $200 million already awarded in a ruling disclosed this week.
In a call handed down on Thursday, the judge found the Islamic republic was required to pay five per cent interest on damages already awarded to the victim.
For the reason that torture occurred in 1990, that amounts to 36 years of interest, or an extra $360 million, bringing the full Iran owes Zahed Haftlang to $560 million.
In keeping with Haftlang’s Toronto lawyer, Mark Arnold, that would be the largest amount a Canadian civil court has ever awarded to a person.
Arnold said he could be serving the judgment to Iran’s supreme leader by email. If Iran doesn’t pay up, the quantity will proceed to rise at a rate of 4 per cent per yr.
Under Canadian law, victims of terrorism are permitted to say seized Iranian assets to repay settlements ordered by the civil courts.
Tehran didn’t take part in the civil case filed by Haftlang, who got here to Canada as a refugee in 2001 after suffering two years of torture in an Iranian prison.
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.
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His case is the most recent under Canada’s Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allows those impacted by terror groups sponsored by Iran to sue for compensation.
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Terror victims have used the law to win several court judgments against Iran. To settle the judgments, Iran’s non-diplomatic assets in Canada have been seized.
Victims also can pursue overseas assets belonging to the Iranian regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a listed terrorist group under Canadian law.
The judge presiding over Haftlang’s case found the “revolutionary arm” of the Iranian state, headed by the supreme leader, was chargeable for his torture.
An auto mechanic in North Vancouver, B.C., Haftlang wrote about his past within the book I, Who Will Not Die. Through his lawyer, he declined to comment on the court case.
A toddler soldier throughout the Iran-Iraq war, Haftlang was captured by Iraqi forces and held captive in 1990. Upon his return to Iran, authorities treated him with suspicion.
“He was an bizarre person upset by the Iran to which he returned,” based on the Ontario court. “They branded him an ‘infidel’ and tortured him to condition him into loyalty to the Supreme Leader.”
Once he was finally freed, he worked on an Iranian cargo vessel and jumped ship in Vancouver’s English Bay. A kayaker in the world helped him ashore.
On May 29, the Ontario court ruled that Iran was chargeable for the abuse it inflicted on Haftlang because his torture was motivated by politics, religion and beliefs.
It due to this fact amounted to terrorism, the court ruled. The choice meant Iran couldn’t profit from the immunity foreign governments generally enjoy from Canada’s courts.
The court’s ruling significantly expanded the scope of the violence covered under Canadian laws to incorporate acts committed by Iran against its own residents.
While the case focused on abuses committed within the Nineties, the regime has continued to mistreat its opponents, equivalent to anti-regime demonstrators.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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