TEHRAN, 26 July 2003 — Iran’s foreign minister yesterday dismissed Canada’s account of the killing of an Iranian near Vancouver as “incomprehensible”, in an escalation of the row between Ottawa and Tehran over the death of an Iranian-Canadian journalist after her arrest here last month. Kamal Kharrazi called for Canada to provide a “convincing explanation” of how the man died and the prosecution of those responsible for what he called the “murder”.
“For the Canadian Foreign Ministry to draw a parallel between the death of Ms. Kazemi and the murder of Keyvan Tabesh is incomprehensible to us,” Kamal Kharrazi was quoted as saying on state-run television. Journalist Zahra Kazemi died in custody from a brain hemorrhage caused by an unexplained blow to the head following her arrest for taking unauthorized photographs outside Tehran’s Evin prison.
Tehran’s handling of the case, including refusing to repatriate her body to Canada, prompted a diplomatic incident which saw Ottawa recall its ambassador.
Reynald Doiron, a spokesman for Canada’s department of foreign affairs, said he was killed while apparently “attacking people with a machete”, and said his death should not be compared to Zahra’s. Later, police in Port Moody, just east of Vancouver, said Tabesh, 18, had been killed on July 14 after charging at a police officer with a machete following another incident in which he attacked a car.
But Kharrazi said: “The preliminary comments made by the Canadian government are more of a justification of the indefensible action of the Canadian police in murdering an Iranian citizen with a firearm, than a clear explanation.” Kharrazi reproached the Canadian government for “not abiding by the rules of diplomacy by not informing us within the required time” of Tabesh’s death and called on Ottawa to provide a “clear and convincing explanation”.
On July 16, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi announced that she “had died of a cerebral hemorrhage after being beaten”.
Ottawa demanded that those responsible be put on trial and Zahra’s body be repatriated to Canada, where she had lived for the past ten years. It announced it was recalling its ambassador after Zahra was buried Tuesday in her home town of Shiraz, at the request of her mother, according to Tehran.
The controversy continued to simmer yesterday with a leading Muslim cleric trying to minimize the political fall-out from the affair. Mohammad Imami-Kashani, standing in for the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at Friday prayers, said: “A journalist has a problem, this is the sort of thing that happens, but then when the foreign media hear about it, they start going on about human rights.
“Our government has said it is going to hold an inquiry and, quite simply, it will do so, but you are looking for a conspiracy everywhere.” The spat comes at a time when Iran is already under pressure from the United States and Europe over its reluctance to allow snap inspections of its nuclear sites, amid suspicions that it was an atomic weapons program.
