Hon. Ralph Goodale
Minister of Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness
269 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, K1A 0P8
Dear Minister Goodale:
Re: Listing of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) as terrorist entities in Canada
The year 2018 witnessed a spike in terrorist activities of the Iranian clerical regime around the globe. To identify only some:
- A blocked terrorist plot in Albania last March, announced by the Albanian prime minister, against main Iranian opposition members;
- A foiled terrorist plot against a large gathering of diaspora Iranians in Paris last June, in which hundreds of Canadians and political figures from Canada took part, including former Prime Minister Harper, Liberal MP Hon. Judy Sgro, Conservative MP Hon. Candice Bergen and myself. That multi-national operation led to the arrest of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat based in Vienna, who was handed over to Belgian judiciary for prosecution and trial;
- Arrest of two Iranian spies in the United States, trying to identify PMOI and Jewish targets.
- A foiled plot to assassinate an Iranian dissident in Denmark. Three people with close ties to Iran’s MOIS were arrested.
- Unprecedented misinformation campaign by the MOIS and IRGC, and their infiltration in Western and Canadian media, to discredit Iranian opposition and to pave the ground for further terror attacks against its members and sympathizers. Major social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, all announced they had to delete scores of fake accounts that tried to influence Western democracies.
- Albania expelled two senior Iranian diplomats in that country for their involvement in activities undermining the safety of Albanians, as well as Iranian dissidents. The ambassador and chief of intelligence station in the Iranian Embassy in Tirana were both expelled, interestingly the first time in its history that Albania had to expel an ambassador.
Iran’s IRGC malign activities in the volatile Middle East region is well documented. Canada’s House of Commons passed a resolution on June 13, 2018, calling on the government to immediately list IRGC as a terrorist entity. PM Justin Trudeau also voted in favour.
Today, on the initiative of Denmark, the European Union, agreed to list MOIS internal security on its list of terrorist entities for its blatant engagement in terrorist activities on European soil. We cannot remain indifferent. We believe Canada is well positioned to take a leading role in not only listing entities that are engaged in terrorist activities, but also to use our Magnitski law, which inter alia sanctions gross human rights violators and sanctions specific individuals.
On December 10, 2018, at a media conference in Ottawa by the chairman of Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, former Minister of Justice Hon. Irwin Cotler, and parliamentarians from all parties, a list of 19 individuals was introduced in a report that highlighted their involvement in gross human rights violations, hence calling for their inclusion in the list of sanctioned individuals. We fully support this initiative.
In conclusion, the C.F.D.I. urges you to act decisively and quickly on all these recommendations.
Sincerely,
Hon. David Kilgour, JD
Co-chair of Canadian Friends of Democratic Iran
CC: Honorable Senators and MPs
