'Strange Marks of Violence'

Anne McIlroy, The Guardian:

Revelations about how the Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was raped and tortured before dying in Iranian custody have increased pressure on the federal government to impose sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Ms [Kazemi]died during a visit to her homeland in July 2003, after she was arrested for taking pictures of a protest outside Evin prison in Tehran. The official Iranian explanation was that the Montreal woman, 54, who had both Canadian and Iranian citizenship, fainted during a hunger strike and fell and fractured her skull.

This account was never credible, but Canadians were still shaken last week by the medical evidence presented by a doctor who examined Ms Kazemi before her death and later fled the country.

"Her entire body carried strange marks of violence," Dr Shahram Azam, who worked for the Iranian defence ministry in 2003, told a packed press conference in Ottawa. READ MORE

Dr Azam says he left Iran in order to tell Canada and the world about what happened to Ms Kazemi. He examined her in the emergency room at the Baghiattulah hospital in Tehran four days after her arrest and was shaken by what he saw. He said she was unconscious, with swelling at the back of the head, missing fingernails, broken fingers, wounds from an apparent flogging, a ruptured eardrum, a crushed big toe, a broken nose bone and evidence of a "very brutal rape". She was declared brain dead hours later but kept on life support for two weeks before she died.

Dr Azam decided to leave Iran and schemed to get permission to go to Finland for medical treatment. He sought asylum in Sweden but then said he feared for his life at the hands of Iranian agents there, so he and his wife and his 12-year-old daughter turned to Canada. He had documentation of Ms Kazemi's injuries and has been granted political asylum here.

Critics, including Ms Kazemi's son Stephan Hachemi, have accused the Canadian government of being fainthearted in its pursuit of justice in this case. Canada had recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest, yet it reinstated a new ambassador in November. By then, the Canadian government had heard Dr Azam's evidence about Ms Kazemi's rape and torture.

"Here's a Canadian citizen abused, tortured, killed by a foreign government, and our government essentially just goes along with it," said the leader of the Conservative party, Stephen Harper.

Critics are calling on the federal government to take a number of steps, including recalling the new ambassador, limiting visas for Iranian officials and pressing the case at the international criminal court. The lawyers for Ms Kazemi's family want Canadian legislation amended so that families of torture victims can sue foreign governments in courts here.

The Canadian foreign affairs minister, Pierre Pettigrew, called the new information "most disturbing" but said he was not prepared to take dramatic diplomatic action against Iran. However, the prime minister, Paul Martin, signalled that Canada was prepared to take other measures.

"I think there is no doubt that whether you're talking about international courts or whether you're talking about the UN commission on human rights, I would certainly think that the details of what happened to her now and the testimony that has been brought have got to make the world aware of just what Iran is all about and that it has got to be held to account," he said.

His comments offered hope for Ms Kazemi's son at the end of what must have been a very difficult week. Mr Hachemi has known for months about Dr Azam's evidence and was stoic at the Ottawa press conference.

"I'm continuing what my mother has started when she stood up to the Iranian regime. She stood up for her rights and I'm not going to stop," he said.

Email: edna.mcilroy@sympatico.ca