October 11-13
Although Canada has refused to allow Iran to provide consular services to expatriates there, the Iranian government is secretly doing just that.
According to Maclean’s, the Canadian national news-magazine akin to Time in the United States, an Iranian Islamic center in Montreal is offering a full range of consular services.
One year ago, Iran’s embassy in Ottawa was shut down by order of the Canadian government and its diplomats sent home. The Islamic Republic sought to have another country offer consular services for it, much as the Swiss embassy in Tehran handles business for the United States. But Canada refused to allow that.
Last month, the Iranian Islamic Center in Montreal launched a Farsi-language web-site advertising an “Iranian consular office” for people needing everything from passport renewals to visas and birth certificates.
Saleh Seboweh, the imam of the center, told Maclean’s he was asked to provide the services by Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “I am not an employee of the Iranian government. I have contact with the people there, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other places. They know me very well, and they trust me,” Seboweh told Maclean’s.
“Because the community, they have a problem. So many of them don’t have a passport. They want to travel; they can’t. So many problems here. We have a lot of babies born; they don’t have Iranian citizenship [papers]. And that’s why we just want to help the community. That’s why we accept this.”
Saleh told Maclean’s the Canadian program is run in co-operation with Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the Iranian embassy in Cuba. The Iranian Islamic Center in Montreal does not provide visas and other certificates itself. Instead, one of its employees will take the necessary paperwork to either Tehran or Havana and return with the requested passport or birth certificate. He says the center charges a fee to cover this cost.
Previously, Saleh said, Iranians in Canada would typically go to Washington, where the Pakistani embassy takes care of Iranian consular services. But this is not practical for many people, he said, especially those with expired passports who therefore cannot travel to the United States.
In a statement emailed to Maclean’s, John Babcock, a spokesman for Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, said, “The Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act (FMIOA) makes it an offence to misrepresent premises as a consular post,” a presumed reference to the website title.
He said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s national police force, would handle any investigation of violations of the act.