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The Ontario court has ordered Iran to pay more than $500 million to a Canadian tortured by the regime, adding to the $200 million already awarded in a ruling disclosed this week.
In a decision handed down on Thursday, the judge found the Islamic republic was required to pay five per cent interest on damages already awarded to the victim.
Since the torture occurred in 1990, that amounts to 36 years of interest, or an additional $360 million, bringing the total Iran owes Zahed Haftlang to $560 million.
According to Haftlang’s Toronto lawyer, Mark Arnold, that may be the largest amount a Canadian civil court has ever awarded to an individual.
Arnold said he would be serving the judgment to Iran’s supreme leader by email. If Iran does not pay up, the amount will continue to rise at a rate of four per cent per year.
Under Canadian law, victims of terrorism are permitted to claim seized Iranian assets to pay off settlements ordered by the civil courts.
Tehran did not participate in the civil case filed by Haftlang, who came to Canada as a refugee in 2001 after suffering two years of torture in an Iranian prison.
His case is the latest under Canada’s Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allows those impacted by terror groups sponsored by Iran to sue for compensation.
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Terror victims have used the law to win several court judgments against Iran. To settle the judgments, Iran’s non-diplomatic assets in Canada have been seized.
Victims can also pursue overseas assets belonging to the Iranian regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a listed terrorist group under Canadian law.
The judge presiding over Haftlang’s case found the “revolutionary arm” of the Iranian state, headed by the supreme leader, was responsible for his torture.
An auto mechanic in North Vancouver, B.C., Haftlang wrote about his past in the book I, Who Will Not Die. Through his lawyer, he declined to comment on the court case.
A child soldier during the Iran-Iraq war, Haftlang was captured by Iraqi forces and held captive in 1990. Upon his return to Iran, authorities treated him with suspicion.
“He was an ordinary person upset by the Iran to which he returned,” according to the Ontario court. “They branded him an ‘infidel’ and tortured him to condition him into loyalty to the Supreme Leader.”
Once he was finally freed, he worked on an Iranian cargo vessel and jumped ship in Vancouver’s English Bay. A kayaker in the area helped him ashore.
On May 29, the Ontario court ruled that Iran was liable for the abuse it inflicted on Haftlang because his torture was motivated by politics, religion and ideology.
It therefore amounted to terrorism, the court ruled. The decision meant Iran could not benefit from the immunity foreign governments generally enjoy from Canada’s courts.
The court’s ruling significantly expanded the scope of the violence covered under Canadian legislation to include acts committed by Iran against its own citizens.
While the case focused on abuses committed in the 1990s, the regime has continued to mistreat its opponents, such as anti-regime demonstrators.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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