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A Quebec Superior Court judge started deliberations Monday on a lawsuit filed by the son of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi against the Iranian government.

Stephan Hashemi, right, is accompanied at the Montreal courthouse by supporters wearing T-shirts bearing the image of his mother, photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. (CBC)Judge Robert Mongeon must choose whether Stephen Hashemi’s $17-million civil suit against Iran and three Iranian officials should go ahead.

Hashemi launched the civil suit in 2006 against the Iranian government, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Saeed Mortazavi, Iran’s prosecutor general, and Mohammad Bakhshi, a prison official, after the Iranian courts failed to convict anyone of the crime.

Kazemi was arrested in Iran on June 23, 2003, while covering a protest outside Evin prison in Tehran. She died in captivity less than a month later. Iranian authorities reported her death as accidental, but the attending physician reported Kazemi showed signs of torture, severe beating, head trauma and rape before her death.

The Iranian government must be held responsible for Kazemi’s death, said Hashemi.

“My life has changed really since my mothers death,” said Hashemi. “This is always on my mind, my mother’s torturing — especially the injustice.”

The fact that the final hearing took place on International Women’s Day holds special significance, said Hashemi.

“She is still alive,” he said. “And she represents I reckon all of us who are repressed and who are victims of this regime.”

Governments granted immunity

Since December, lawyers for the Iranian government have claimed Hashemi’s lawsuit violates Canada’s State Immunity Act, which doesn’t allow for civil cases against governments except for commercial reasons.Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist killed in Iran in 2003, was the subject of a court hearing in Montreal on Monday. Her son questioned that his lawsuit against Iran and several officials be allowed to go forward.
(Canadian Press)

The case has also placed Canadian government lawyers in the awkward position of having to defend Iran’s immunity.

But lawyers for Hashemi, the Canadian Centre for International Justice and Amnesty International Canada argued the case must be allowed to go forward in the interest of justice.

“When acts of torture are being cloaked with immunity, that is simply incorrect,” said Hashemi’s lawyer, Kurt Johnson. “It amounts to impunity.”

Should Hashemi succeed, the case would set an international precedent and send a powerful message that Canada “will not recognize the immunity of states who commit torture,” said Amnesty International lawyer Francois Larocque.

The judge is expected to take several weeks to issue his ruling — and should he side with Hashemi, the case is expected to be appealed.

Afghan police guard a prison in Kabul in 2004. A new document obtained by CBC News suggests the government had a plot to deal with accusations that prisoners transferred by Canadians into Afghan custody were being tortured months before such allegations were made publicly. (Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press)

The Canadian government started formulating a plot for how to deal with accusations of torture of prisoners in Afghanistan as early as March 2007 — months before such allegations first came up in the media — a document obtained by CBC News suggests.

A memorandum drafted by officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs says that if “NGOs, relatives, media or otherwise make credible allegations that detainees transferred by CF [Canadian Forces] to Afghan authorities have been potentially abused following their transfer,” officials must inform the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Red Cross.

They must also “follow up separately to address potential concerns with the conditions of detention,” the memo says.

First drafts of the document were written in March 2007, months before the Globe and Mail reported that 30 prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by the Canadian military were “beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogations.”

The timing of the memorandum shows the government was concerned about the possibility that detainees were being abused while in Afghan custody long before such revelations became public.

More to come

Const. Vu Pham, 37, of the Ontario Provincial Police was fatally shot Monday near Seaforth, Ont.

An Ontario Provincial Police officer has died after a shootout Monday morning near Seaforth, Ont., north of London.

Const. Vu Pham, 37, a father of three, died of his injuries in hospital, police said in a news release Monday afternoon.

“I am deeply saddened by the loss of this young courageous officer, who was committed to protecting the citizens of Ontario,” OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said.

A cruiser blocks a road near the scene of a shootout Monday that claimed the life of a 15-year veteran of the OPP and wounded a man about 70 years ancient. (CBC)

Pham’s wife, Heather, and other family were with him when he died, Fantino said at a news conference. Fantino hailed Pham as “one of our heroes.”

Born in Vietnam, Pham was a 15-year member of the OPP, working out of the Bruce County detachment. He had also served in the Cochrane and West Parry Sound detachments.

Earlier, Fantino said police were called at 10:18 a.m. ET to the North Line in Huron County. When the officer attempted to stop a vehicle, he was confronted by an armed man, shot and immediately incapacitated.

“The suspect was also shot in the incident and he too is presently in hospital,” said Fantino, who added that then man was about 70 years ancient.

No other police officers were injured.

Reports suggested the officer exchanged 15 to 20 shots with the unidentified man

Faith Weber, a resident of Brussels, Ont., was a witness to the shooting. She told radio station CKNX that the officer and another man fired at each other across a road.

An Ontario Provincial Police with the Bruce County detachment officer died Monday after a shootout near Seaforth, Ont., north of London. (CBC)“The guy [was] laying in the ditch and the police officer was on the other side of the road in the ditch but he was standing up and they were both shooting back and forth at each other,” she said. “When I was there, there was probably about five, six shots that already went off, and then we had to go back farther and then there was more shots going off.”

She said the gunfire finished after more police officers arrived at the scene.

“There are still many loose ends to deal with,” Fantino said.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit and the OPP’s criminal investigation branch are investigating the shooting. The SIU investigates cases of serious injury or death involving police and civilians.

The unit has sent six investigators and three forensic investigators to the scene. They are looking into witness accounts and are asking people with information to call 1-800-622-2342.

With the latest death, 104 OPP officers have been killed in the line of duty.

Before Pham, the last OPP officer to die in the line of duty was Const. Alan Hack of the Elgin County detachment. On July 6, 2009, Hack and his partner were trying to arrest a suspect when a transport truck hit their cruiser. Hack died of his injuries in hospital in Newbury, Ont.

Funeral details for Pham will be provided at a later time, Fantino said.

With files from The Canadian Press