November 01, 2019
The Philippine Bureau of Immigration says an Iranian female student has been arrested based on an Interpol red notice saying she is wanted by Iran on a charge of assault.
However, the bureau said Bahareh Zare Bahari cannot be deported just now because she has applied for asylum in the Philippines and that application must be acted on first.
The Interpol website does not list Bahari as wanted by Iran. It lists only four people currently being sought by Iran—three men wanted for fraud and a woman sought for embezzlement, forgery and money laundering.
Interpol lists very few Iranians sought by Iran because it has found many requests are for political arrests, and Interpol’s policies bar it from pursuing political cases. Interpol does not even list the two Iranians that Tehran says fled to Canada after embezzling vast sums of funds.
Bahari told The Philippine Star she was studying dentistry in the Philippines and was now in her final year. She said she fears the Islamic Republic will kill her as soon as she is deported because she violated regime rules by entering beauty pageants and speaking out on women’s rights.
“The Iran regime … tried its best to deport me nine months ago, but I was successful [in stopping that]. Now they make a fake case in Iran,” she told The Star.
Bihari was entered in the Miss Intercontinental beauty pageant last year, where she appeared as a “representative” of Iran carrying the pre-revolutionary flag.
The Bureau of Immigration said its search uncovered the fact that Bahari is wanted in the Philippines on an assault and battery charge in the city of Dagupan. Bahari said she was never charged in Dagupan, but was charged and cleared in Baguio in a scam that involved $3,000 she lent to an Iranian couple there.
Later, the Bureau of Immigration issued a correction and said it was not aware of any criminal case pending against her in the Philippines.
It said the deportation request had been made “presumably on account of a pending criminal case against her in Iran, and this case was filed by an Iranian national against her in relation to an assault that happened presumably here in the Philippines.” Iran says other countries cannot try people for crimes in Iran; only Iranian courts can try people for crimes in Iran. But that principle does not seem to apply the other way around.