Globe and Mail
16 March 2007
Free of airport limbo, Iranian embraces Canada

JONATHAN WOODWARD

VANCOUVER — After 10 months in a Moscow airport sleeping on cold floors, eating scraps from passengers and bathing in the departure lounge toilets, an Iranian refugee and her children finally landed in Canada Thursday.

Zahra Kamalfar collapsed with shock and happiness into the arms of her supporters, and a brother she hadn't seen in 13 years, mere moments after she descended an escalator into the arrivals area of the Vancouver International Airport.

“Canada, thank you so much,” Ms. Kamalfar, 47, said in stilted English, to an assemblage of news media and airport staff, before she stumbled to the floor, crying and shaking.

Her 18-year-old daughter, Anna Kamalfar, stood up to the microphones with her brother Davood, 13, in their mother's place, and said they looked forward to a better life in Canada than they had in Iran.

“I want a bright future for myself,” Anna said.

“I don't think about anything. I feel free now. I will see the sea, the sky, the sun. I say to everyone: Freedom is very important. Thank you, Canada.”

However, before the family's ordeal was over, the RCMP extended Ms. Kamalfar's legal limbo in airports when they stopped her for about an hour for allegedly smoking on the plane, an Air Canada flight via Toronto. An RCMP spokesman said charges were possible, but none had been laid.

The story of Zahra Kamalfar's journey to Canada spans two years, four countries, many legal appeals and a nearly interminable wait in the departure lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow.

Ms. Kamalfar and her husband, Iman, were Dervishes, members of a branch of Sufism that believes in mystical rituals. The Shah of Iran had granted them land. In 1979, when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, the Kamalfar's politics and religion suddenly became unpopular.

In 1986, Mr. Kamalfar was arrested for handing out leaflets calling for the return of the Shah, and was imprisoned for two years. The family lay low, and Ms. Kamalfar ran a boutique selling women's clothes while raising their two children. But in 2001, they returned to passing out leaflets, protested against Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and the death of several university students, and converted to Christianity.

In 2004, Mr. and Ms. Kamalfar were arrested again. Ms. Kamalfar was violently interrogated for “collaborating” in anti-government activities, and she heard through fellow inmates that her husband was killed while in police custody.

The next year, Ms. Kamalfar arranged for a 48-hour-release from prison, and obtained false travel papers. She and the children fled overland to Turkey and booked a flight to Canada.

The flight took them to Moscow and then Frankfurt, where her travel papers were questioned. She was sent back to Moscow, and held at a detention facility for 13 months.

Ten months ago, that facility was shut down and dozens of people claiming refugee status were immediately deported. The European Court of Human Rights put a stay on her deportation order after an appeal by a U.S. lawyer.

Unable to return to Russia, and without a country that would accept her, Ms. Kamalfar and her children were stuck in the Moscow airport.

“Aeroflot [Russia's international airline] gave her vouchers, and they got what little they could out of the food kiosks and slept on the floor,” said Washington lawyer Eileen O'Connor. “They had to wash in the bathrooms. When we met them they had blankets, because the airport gets very cold in the winter.”

Ms. O'Connor and other lawyers made an appeal to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on the family's behalf.

“The hardest thing was to prove her story and get the UNHCR to listen,” lawyer Olga Anisimova said on the phone from Russia.

Communicating with Ms. Kamalfar was nearly impossible, Ms. Anisimova said. It wasn't until a Russian doctor heard of her case through the media and gave her a cellphone that she could receive calls from the outside world.

She wasn't supposed to have the cellphone, and had to be vigilant to avoid Russian officials. And people she believes were Iranian agents attempted to contact her.

But once her brother, who arrived in Canada as a refugee from Iran eight years ago, had talked to her on the phone, he got in touch with the Iranian Federation of Refugees, who called Ms. O'Connor's law firm.

Ms. O'Connor got in touch with Las Vegas lawyer Zohreh Mizrahi, who spoke Farsi and could interview Ms. Kamalfar and draft an appeal to the UNHCR.

On Dec. 21, she was granted refugee status. The families and the lawyers heard late last week that Canada had accepted the family.
“We are so happy,” said her brother, Nader Kamalfar, as he waited at the airport with supporters carrying signs and balloons. “All my sister wanted was to see the sun. We thank God this has ended this way.”