World News: Kavoos Soofi Shiaoosh’s one-way ticket to an uncertain fate in Iran - thestar.com
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1162819--kavoos-soofi-shiaoosh-s-one-way-ticket-to-an-uncertain-fate-in-iran ...”But Soofi, a refugee claimant under a deportation order from Immigration Canada, was in the Toronto West Detention Centre, behind bars because the authorities had declared him a flight risk. And in spite of interventions from lawyers, experts, international human rights organizations and a federal court judge who had ordered a stay of deportation on Feb. 3, he may soon be headed for a far worse place, a cell in Iran’s feared Evin prison, if he loses a final risk -assessment review. The charges that would await him are all too familiar: treason, espionage, insulting Islam, apostasy. They are routinely levelled against those who protest the clerical regime or abandon Islam — both of which Soofi has done. All are punishable by death. His membership in Iran’s increasingly persecuted Kurdish minority augments the danger. “I did what anyone in Canada is allowed to do, because it’s a free country,” Soofi says while recuperating in his brother’s Thornhill apartment from a month in detention and an 11-day hunger strike. But claiming rights and freedoms that are taken for granted in Canada can be fatal in Iran, a country that routinely represses, tortures and executes its citizens, with no scruples about its methods of obtaining “confessions” of guilt. “I had a good job in Iran, but I came here and worked hard so I could know what it’s like to live in freedom,” says Soofi, who had been the sales manager of a computer company. “Canada speaks out against the abuses that are happening in Iran, but it sends people back when they are facing the very same kind of punishment.” Not according to Immigration Canada. It reviewed Soofi’s case and checked all the boxes: risk of persecution, risk of torture, risk to life, risk of cruel or unusual punishment. No, no, no and again no. “Canada has one of the fairest refugee systems in the world,” it says in an email to the Star, adding that “due process has been followed at every step of Mr. Soofi’s claim for protection.” So determined was the department that Soofi faced no substantial risks if he returned that the Canadian Border Services Agency obtained a travel document from Iran, marking him as a scheduled deportee. To drive the point home it bought him a one-way ticket to Tehran.”...
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1162819--kavoos-soofi-shiaoosh-s-one-way-ticket-to-an-uncertain-fate-in-iran ...”But Soofi, a refugee claimant under a deportation order from Immigration Canada, was in the Toronto West Detention Centre, behind bars because the authorities had declared him a flight risk. And in spite of interventions from lawyers, experts, international human rights organizations and a federal court judge who had ordered a stay of deportation on Feb. 3, he may soon be headed for a far worse place, a cell in Iran’s feared Evin prison, if he loses a final risk -assessment review. The charges that would await him are all too familiar: treason, espionage, insulting Islam, apostasy. They are routinely levelled against those who protest the clerical regime or abandon Islam — both of which Soofi has done. All are punishable by death. His membership in Iran’s increasingly persecuted Kurdish minority augments the danger. “I did what anyone in Canada is allowed to do, because it’s a free country,” Soofi says while recuperating in his brother’s Thornhill apartment from a month in detention and an 11-day hunger strike. But claiming rights and freedoms that are taken for granted in Canada can be fatal in Iran, a country that routinely represses, tortures and executes its citizens, with no scruples about its methods of obtaining “confessions” of guilt. “I had a good job in Iran, but I came here and worked hard so I could know what it’s like to live in freedom,” says Soofi, who had been the sales manager of a computer company. “Canada speaks out against the abuses that are happening in Iran, but it sends people back when they are facing the very same kind of punishment.” Not according to Immigration Canada. It reviewed Soofi’s case and checked all the boxes: risk of persecution, risk of torture, risk to life, risk of cruel or unusual punishment. No, no, no and again no. “Canada has one of the fairest refugee systems in the world,” it says in an email to the Star, adding that “due process has been followed at every step of Mr. Soofi’s claim for protection.” So determined was the department that Soofi faced no substantial risks if he returned that the Canadian Border Services Agency obtained a travel document from Iran, marking him as a scheduled deportee. To drive the point home it bought him a one-way ticket to Tehran.”...
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