The Canada Border Services Agency alleges Abbas Omidi served as a high-ranking member of the Iranian government.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
An alleged former senior Iranian official whom Canada is trying to remove from the country insisted during his deportation hearing Tuesday that he was just a middling bureaucrat reviewing technical reports in the ministry of mines before emigrating in 2022.
The Canada Border Services Agency says Abbas Omidi should be deported for allegedly having served as a high-ranking member of the Iranian government, citing a 2022 federal ban on senior Iranian officials.
Mr. Omidi worked for the Iranian public service for nearly 27 years, eventually rising to the rank of deputy director-general of the exploration office in Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade. He has been living in Canada since 2022.
The hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, which is being held virtually, takes place as Ottawa faces renewed scrutiny for its efforts to remove senior Iranian officials from the country, after the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran last month.
Since the 2022 ban was announced, the CBSA has identified 32 people it believes are inadmissible to Canada, but only one has been removed.
CBSA accuses man of being former senior Iranian official in deportation hearing
During Tuesday’s hearing, the border agency tried to determine if Mr. Omidi was involved in permitting for strategic mineral extraction or exercising managerial functions in his department, such as hiring and firing.
The 55-year-old career public servant, who had said a day earlier that he was several ranks below the deputy minister, emphasized the dry, technical nature of his work and its relative lack of seniority.
“I worked in a technical office in an expert role. I didn’t have any role in policy making,” he said on Tuesday, speaking through a translator. “My average day was studying reports that experts were submitting to the office, analyzing them and submitting them to the relevant manager.”
The CBSA presented Mr. Omidi with transcripts from a previous interview he gave the agency in which he boasted of his professional standing.
“Even right now, no one in Iran has the capacity and title like me,” he previously said. When he decided to leave government service “everybody noticed that” and the private sector “became on alert. They were watching, watching to hire me to work for them.”
MPs demand answers about failure to deport and name Iranian regime officials
Still, on Tuesday, Mr. Omidi underlined his lack of authority in the Iranian mining bureaucracy. He did not hire or fire anyone, he testified, and only had the power to approve vacation if his superior was away.
Mr. Omidi, a trained geologist, said his career with the Iranian government began in 1995, when he worked as an exploration expert for a provincial department of the mining ministry.
He was previously questioned about forms he had submitted to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada indicating he had worked for the Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization. The U.S. imposed sanctions on that organization in 2010, calling it “a major holding company that provides services to and aims to expand Iran’s mining and mineral goods sector.”
But Mr. Omidi said he did not work for the organization, and that there was an error because of an incorrect translation.
The CBSA alleges that Mr. Omidi meets the definition of a senior official as laid out in the federal ban announced in November, 2022. At the time, Ottawa designated Iran a regime “that has engaged in terrorism and systematic and gross human-rights violations.”
The ban, first aimed at officials serving in the regime since 2019, followed global protests about the fate of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in custody after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s dress code.
CBSA has removed only one senior Iranian official from Canada under federal ban
Two years later, the federal government extended the scope of the ban to senior officials who had served in the regime since June 22, 2003 – the day Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested in Tehran. She was tortured and died a few weeks later.
Mr. Omidi’s hearing was originally expected to conclude on Tuesday, but the Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator set two later dates for it to continue in the coming weeks.
Global News reported that Mr. Omidi asked last month to have his hearing conducted behind closed doors and for his name to be withheld from publication. The outlet fought the publication ban, and the board ruled last week that the hearing would be made public.
The CBSA says it has been investigating 95 cases involving possible high-ranking members of the Iranian regime. Four of them have left the country voluntarily.
As of March 5, two others had been issued deportation orders for their ties to the Iranian regime.
A further five people have been deemed admissible by the Immigration and Refugee Board, though the border agency has appealed four of those decisions.