September 27-2013
The Islamic Republic Monday set free an Iranian-Canadian it had convicted of spying and previously sentenced to die.
Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, a naturalized Candian and Toronto shoe salesman, has been freed from Evin prison after five years there and hopes he can soon return to his wife in Canada.
The release on the eve of President Rohani’s speech to the UN raised questions as to whether the release was intended to lessen frictions with Canada. Canada has led the annual assault in the UN on Iran for human rights violations. The annual cycle normally starts about this time of year and results in a UN General Assembly vote in December.
Ghassemi-Shall, 43, is one of three people from Canada seized by Iran. Another trio from the United States have also been swept up in the Islamic Republic.
Ghassemi-Shall’s crime appeared to be having a politically active brother. Ghassemi-Shall returned to Iran in 2008 to check on his brother, Alborz, who was in prison on political charges and subsequently sentenced to death.
Shortly after arriving from Canada, Hamid Ghassemi-Shall was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for espionage. As Hamid set in prison, Alborz reportedly died of natural causes in 2009.
The appeal of Hamid’s case was not heard until Monday when, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reports, a Revolutionary Court overturned his espionage conviction and instead convicted him of “illegal assembly and collusion” relating to the street riots that erupted in July 1999.
The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment for that offense. Since Ghassemi-Shall had already served five years and four months, he was immediately freed Monday evening.
In Toronto, his wife, Antonella Mega, said she had spoken to him multiple times in the 24 hours after he was freed.
She is hoping her husband, who is now staying with his sister in Tehran, will be able to return to Toronto soon, but she told The Globe and Mail of Toronto it’s unclear whether the Iranian government has placed any conditions on his release.
“My position always has been that I’ll feel better when he’s here with me,” said Ms. Mega, who met her husband when she bought a pair of shoes from him in the 1990s.
Initially, her husband sounded “a little bit out of sorts” and “wasn’t making 100 percent sense,” Ms. Mega said, attributing his confusion to his long ordeal. “It’ll be a long road, but I hope he’ll be okay,” she said. “He’s just kind of starting to breathe.”
In subsequent phone calls, Ms. Mega had to tell her husband that Gunner, their 11-year-old German Shepherd, is dying of suspected spleen cancer. She arranged to have him euthanized Tuesday. “It’s one of those situations where you’re ecstatic on one side and being dragged down on the other.”
Iran’s relations with Canada have been even testier than those with the United States. The current Conservative Party government has gone toe-to-toe with Iran in rhetorical battle, something the Obama Administration has always declined to do. The Canadian government has even taken a dim view of the Rohani government’s efforts to set up negotiations with the West. (See accompanying story.)
Ghassemi-Shall is one of three prisoners in Iran that Canada cares about.
The others are Saeed Malekpour and Hossein Derakh-shan, whose cases have received much more media attention in Canada than Ghassemi-Shall’s.
Saeed Malekpour moved to Ontario in 2008 after leaving Iran in 2004. Arriving in Canada with a degree in metallurgical engineering from Iran, he was set to enroll in a master’s program at the University of Victoria. But when he found out that his father was dying in Tehran, he decided to pay his father a visit in December 2008, fearing that might be the last time he would see him.
Malekpour, 38, was soon arrested and convicted of running a pornographic website, with evidence being the fact that his name appeared in the credits on the website. His family said Malekpour ran no such website but designed some software that many website managers had bought. The credit line on the pornographic website was for the software the website had bought, the family has said.
Last month, the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic overrode the death sentence, but refused to allow a new trial, instead sentencing Malekpour to life in prison, believed to be the harshest sentence ever given an Iranian expatriate by Iran.
He has already spent 4 1/2 years in prison.
Malekpour holds permanent residency in Canada but not citizenship.
Toronto blogger Hossein Derakhshan is serving a 20-year sentence in prison.
Derakhshan is known for popularizing blogging in Iran and for helping members of the Iranian diaspora voice their opinions via blog sites. He was sentenced to 20 years in jail for “cooperating with a hostile regime” and spreading propaganda; the charge is partially due to time he spent in Israel—the Islamic Republic’s arch enemy.
Relations between Tehran and Ottawa have remained tense since 2003, when Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi died in custody in Tehran. Since then, relations between the two countries have worsened, with Ottawa finally severing relations last year.