A senior Iranian government official has been discovered living comfortably in Toronto, prompting Canada to launch a deportation case against him.
A member of Iran’s Islamist dictatorship, Seyed Salman Samani, 42, now faces a deportation hearing under sanctions that were imposed last year, banning any senior member of the Iranian regime from Canada. Proceedings are scheduled to start on Jan. 3, 2024.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) requested the Immigration and Refugee Board hold a hearing for Samani that could result in his deportation.
“Samani was referred for an admissibility hearing on Nov. 10, 2023,” Anna Pape, a spokesperson for the Refugee Board told Global News.
Samani’s case will mark the first of its kind under the new sanctions, implemented following the murder of Mahsa Amini by Iranian morality police after she showed her hair in public.
Amini’s death sparked outrage from women under Iran’s regime and prompted the Canadian government to designate Iran’s government as a regim engaged in “terrorism and systematic and gross human rights violations.”
The policy led to tens of thousands of Iranian officials and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps being barred from entry into Canada.
The CBSA has declined to comment publicly on Samani’s case, citing privacy laws.
“The CBSA cannot comment on where any person may be residing, however we can say that the CBSA only requests admissibility hearings for persons presently in Canada,” said CBSA spokesperson Guillaume Bérubé.
In 2016, an Iranian official with the same name was appointed to be Iran’s Deputy Minister of Interior, the government has not commented on whether or not the ongoing case concerns Samani the minister.
The Interior Ministry manages domestic police agencies and security in Iran and has been the subject of many human rights abuses.
Canada, along with the U.S. and Europe, has sanctioned Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general.
Vahidi allegedly “deployed (the police agency) to subdue protests in Iran, including the ongoing protests over the death of Mahsa Amini.”
“In the past, Vahidi has warned Iranian women that the government’s security forces will penalize those ‘breaking rules’ in reference to hijab compliance,” said the U.S. Treasury.
Samani is the department’s deputy minister and official spokesperson, according to his profile on the interior ministry’s website. He represented Iran at the United Nations in 2019, defending Tehran’s human rights record.
Terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are armed, financed and trained in Iran, as well as other militia groups located in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, praised the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants, saying “We are proud of them” in a post on X.
“It’s impossible to climb the ranks like that without being loyal to the system,” Kaveh Shahrooz, a Toronto lawyer and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Sharooz said that Canada is a safe haven for regime members.
“They see it as an easy country to get into, to bring their money and launder their money here. And frankly, I think it’s also because our officials are just not taking this issue as seriously as they should.”
Sharooz said that he wasn’t surprised to learn that a senior Iranian official was discovered in Canada. “It tells me that there’s a broken system in place in Canada,” he said.
According to the Canadian government, its ban on Iranian regime members applies to “a wide array of individuals in a regime that has perpetrated crimes against the people of Iran and other nations. It includes: heads of state, members of the Cabinet, ambassadors, senior diplomats, members of the judiciary, senior military and intelligence officials and senior public servants.”
News of the Iranian senior official’s whereabouts comes on the heels of a major investigation that revealed an estimated 700 Iranian regime members are currently in Canada and covertly operating.
