Canadian court orders Iran to pay $200 million to BC man who was tortured ‘incredibly’.
A Canadian court has ordered the Iranian government to pay $200 million to a British Columbia mechanic who was called an ‘infidel’ and tortured for criticizing the Islamic state.
In a decision obtained by Global News, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded $100 million in compensatory damages and another $100 million in punitive damages to Zahed Haftlang.
The court said Haftlang, an Iranian refugee who fled to Canada in 2001, deserved the unusually large sum due to “years of abuse” and “lifelong mental damage”.
Justice Lee Akazaki wrote that while a single judgment does not stop Iran’s torture, “the accumulation of damage awards, often issued against Iran’s frozen foreign assets, has some effect.”
Although foreign governments are generally immune from Canadian civil courts, Justice Akazaki ruled that Iran’s torture of Haftlang was motivated by the country’s politics, religion and ideology.
Because of this, they were “terrorist activities” such as foreign attacks aimed at silencing the opposition to the regime, so Iran did not benefit from the regime’s security, the judge ruled.
“Therefore, Iran is liable to Mr. Haftlang and is subject to this court’s judgment for his losses as a result of his actions,” according to the 13-page ruling issued on May 29.
The decision is the latest against Iran by a Canadian court under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allows those affected by terrorism to sue state sponsors of the groups they harmed.
It was the first time a Canadian court found that acts of terrorism included Iran’s atrocities against its own citizens, and it could open the door to many more such cases.
Haftlang’s lawyer, Mark Arnold, said it could be the largest sum ever awarded to a Canadian. An Ontario court previously awarded $100 million in property damages to the six passengers killed when the state shot down Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8, 2020.
Zahed Haftlang, seen here in the documentary ‘My Enemy, My Brother,’ was tortured by the Iranian regime and now lives in BC’s Lower Mainland.
YouTube
The decision dates back to abuses committed in the 1990s, but the regime has continued to mistreat dissidents, most recently in January with the killing of dozens of anti-government protesters.
While the US and Israel’s war against Iran in February initially raised hopes of regime change, that seems unlikely as US President Donald Trump struggles to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Get daily world news
Get daily Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss the top stories of the day.
Haftlang is now a Canadian citizen and works as an auto mechanic in North Vancouver, BC But before he resettled in Canada 25 years ago, he was drafted into the Iranian army at the age of 13.
When he enlisted as a child soldier, in 1981, Iran was at war with neighboring Iraq. Haftlang was captured by Iraqi forces and imprisoned until the end of the conflict, when he was returned home.
But the Iranian authorities have accused him, according to the court decision. In his interview, he criticized the Iranian regime, causing the authorities to call him an infidel and put him in prison.
During the two years he was incarcerated, Iranian police and prison guards beat him, put objects in his holes, attached objects to his private parts, and electrocuted him, leaving him with a concussion, the court said.
He was released in 1993, and went to work on government-controlled cargo ships, where he clashed with what the judge described as “members of the group who stuck to their ideas.”
On board the Iran Mazandaran, he insulted Iran’s supreme leader. Fearing that the captain would report him, he jumped overboard in Vancouver’s English Bay, and a spaceship helped him ashore.
Now married with two children, she sued the Iranian government in 2024 with the help of Arnold, a Toronto lawyer with a long history of successful civil court actions against the Islamic Republic.
Before the court could rule on the case, it had to first determine whether Iran had civil rights. Under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, Iran cannot claim immunity for acts of terrorism.
Justice Akazaki found that Iran’s harassment of Haftlang amounted to terrorism because it stemmed from the decision that “he was an infidel who deserved to be controlled and isolated from Iranian society.”
The “revolutionary arm” of the Iranian regime controlled by the Supreme Leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is responsible for Haftlang’s arrest, the judge ruled.
“I also conclude that these revolutionary players were driven by the suspicions of a prisoner who was returned from the war because of his dissent and the length of his imprisonment in Iraqi military prisons,” the judge wrote.
“They called him an ‘infidel’ and tortured him to make him loyal to the Supreme Leader,” according to the ruling, which said he was tortured “to suppress any doubts he may have had about his participation as an Iranian soldier.”
“He was an ordinary person who was outraged by the Iran he returned to and was captured by paranoid state criminals,” wrote the judge, who said that what Haftlang endured “was less an act of terror than a law-and-order shooting in a residential area.”
By enacting the law raising Iran’s immunity, Canada had “joined a group of countries requiring Iran to cease the use of violence and the threat of violence against civilians as a tool of foreign and domestic policy,” the judge said.
In addition to the $200 million, the court awarded Haftlang’s wife an additional $100,000 and $50,000 to her daughter for “loss of guidance, care and companionship” caused by the state’s actions.
Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 and added Tehran to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Since then, victims of terrorism have won several judgments against Iran in Canadian courts.
To compensate them, non-national Iranian goods in Canadian cities were sold off. The government considers the Tehran embassy, like the Ottawa embassy, inviolable, but victims want to change that through the courts.
Iranian officials expressed outrage over the loss of their assets and Canadian bank accounts, accusing Ottawa of “economic terrorism.” They also threatened to seize Canadian ships in retaliation.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
