Canada has sanctioned a high-profile former Tehran police chief whose appearance at a Toronto-area gym last year sparked outrage and allegations that Canada is a haven for high-ranking members of Iran’s regime and their relatives.
Morteza Talaei is a retired second brigadier general with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was in charge of Tehran’s police in 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten to death in custody.
Kazemi was arrested in 2003 for taking photos of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where protests were taking place over students detained by the regime.
Iran’s government eventually admitted she had been beaten but maintains her death was accidental. The attending physician, who fled to Canada, said Kazemi showed signs of “very brutal rape,” torture and head trauma before her death.
Now, almost 20 years after Kazemi’s death, the federal government has announced it is targeting Talaei — along with three other Iranians and five entities — under the Special Economic Measures Act for gross and systemic human rights violations committed in Iran.
Under the regulations, the government can ban people from entering Canada and freeze any assets they may have in the country.
“We’re looking and continuing to look at all ways to ensure that the Iranian regime knows its continued reprehensible behaviour is absolutely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.
Iranian journalists light candles for Canadian-Iranian freelance photographer Zahra Kazemi, who died while under arrest in Tehran in 2003. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
The federal government is under intense pressure from the Iranian-Canadian diaspora and the Conservatives to get tough on Iran.
The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September triggered massive protests across Iran and around the world, including in Canada. Iran’s morality police arrested Amini for wearing her mandatory hijab “improperly.”
On Nov. 14, the federal government listed Iran as a regime that engages in terrorism and systemic human rights violations and banned regime members, including their relatives, from entering Canada. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said the ban could lead the government to revoke a relative’s permanent resident status if they’re already in Canada.
Some Iranian-Canadians claim thatregime officials have immediate family living in Canada and may have financial assets here. Many in the Iranian community also allege that female family members of Iranian officials in Canada often don’t adhere to the strict dress codes the regime itself requires for women in Iran.
A video and photos posted on social media in January showed Talaei walking on a treadmill at a gym in Richmond Hill in 2021. Swiss-based Iranian independent journalist Abdollah Abdi posted the images, raising questions about what Talaei was doing in the country.
Abdi said Talaei later told him he was visiting his daughter but insisted it was a private matter.
An Iranian journalist inside Iran, Fariborz Kalantari, tweeted that the question isn’t why Talaei was in Canada but rather how his daughter obtained Canadian residency.
The National Post was the first Canadian media outlet to report on the photos.
سردار مرتضی طلایی کجاست؟<br><br>بر اساس عکس‌ها و فیلم به دست رسیده مرتضی طلائی، نایب رئیس سابق شورای اسلامی شهر تهران و رئیس پلیس سابق تهران بزرگ که در سال هشتاد و پنج با درجه نظامی سردار سرتیپ دوم پاسدار بازنشسته شده بود اکنون در کاناد اقامت دارد و به زندگی مشغول است. <a href=”https://t.co/6X3WHBtWKD”>pic.twitter.com/6X3WHBtWKD</a>
Many on social media called out the hypocrisy of a high-ranking regime official working out at a gym where women do not wear hijabs.
U.S.-based Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad has called on Canada to find out how the former “chief of Tehran police and IRGC commander was allowed to enter the country.”
“He’s working out next to an unveiled woman but his police flogged women for not wearing hijab,” she tweeted in January to her 600,000-plus followers.
Shocking that Canada gave visa to this torturer. <br>We call on Canada to investigate how former chief of Tehran police and IRGC commander was allowed to enter the country. <br>He’s working out next to an unveiled woman but his police flogged women for not wearing hijab.<a href=”https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@JustinTrudeau</a> <a href=”https://t.co/4dVSlVP0h5″>pic.twitter.com/4dVSlVP0h5</a>
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not answer CBC’s questions about how Talaei entered Canada previously and whether any family he might have here would be affected by the sanctions against him.
“Due to privacy legislation,” the department said, “we cannot comment on individual cases.”
IRCC said broadly that spouses, partners or dependent children of those sanctioned for being a member of a terrorist organization would be inadmissible to Canada. But it added that “if a person is already in Canada and becomes inadmissible due to an inadmissible family member, they could apply for a temporary resident permit or for permanent residence under humanitarian and compassionate considerations.”
CBC News has searched property records and has not located any homes listed under Talaei’s name in Ontario.
The National Post reported on Talaei’s controversial history in Iran, including his role in creating a new police unit in Tehran in 2006 to enforce the country’s dress code for women.
Women in Iran accused of not wearing their veils properly face arrest and prison.
Talaei told the state-controlled Fars news agency in 2006 the unit would “confront women showing their bare legs in short pants.”
“We are also going to combat women wearing skimpy head scarves, short and form-fitting coats, and the ones walking pets in parks and streets,” he said.
The federal government also announced sanctions against Ali Ghanaatkar, who was a senior judge, prosecutor and interrogator at Evin prison.
U.K. Labour Party MP Chris Bryant has alleged Ghanaatkar was involved in mistreating detainees, bringing false charges against them and forcefully interrogating them.
The federal government also announced sanctions on Iran’s Javan News Agency, the Baharestan Kish Company, Safiran Airport Services and Hassan Karami, the commander of the Islamic Republic’s Law Enforcement Forces special units.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
