Ottawa Citizen:
The Iranian Embassy on Metcalfe Street.
Iranian-Canadian activists who blew the whistle on Iran’s alleged recruitment program in Canada say they privately warned numerous politicians and officials of the Islamic republic’s activities in the weeks before government ministers spoke out in reaction to the Citizen’s report on the scheme.
Photograph by: Jennifer Campbell , The Ottawa Citizen
The Iranian-Canadian activists who blew the whistle on Iran’s alleged recruitment program in Canada say they privately warned numerous politicians and officials of the Islamic republic’s activities in the weeks before government ministers spoke out in reaction to the Citizen’s report on the scheme.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews publicly admonished Iran after the Citizen’s July 10 front-page article told how a senior Iranian Embassy official in Canada was calling on Iranian-Canadians to “be of service” to Tehran.
Activists Shabnam Assadollahi and Shadi Paveh of the Ottawa region say they dispatched emails last month flagging what some terror experts described as an Iranian “call to arms.”
“I was fuming when I heard Vic Toews’ reaction,” Assadollahi told theCitizen, signalling she considered the minister’s admonishment to be tardy. She said she personally asked Toews at an Ottawa event in May for a meeting to discuss what she later called threats by “extremist groups” in Canada.