Pair accused of murdering Iranian dissident Masood Masjoody appear in court | CBC News
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The man and woman accused of the first-degree murder of Iranian dissident Masood Masjoody appeared briefly in Vancouver provincial court Wednesday, where their case was adjourned to April 27 to allow for exchange of disclosure between Crown and defence.
Mehdi Ahmadzadeh Razavi appeared by video from North Fraser Pretrial Centre, while Arezou Soltani appeared by video from Alouette Correctional Centre for Women.
Afterwards, two groups of spectators who were in the courtroom exchanged angry words outside the courthouse in a skirmish that had to be broken up by sheriffs. CBC News spoke to members of one group who declined to identify themselves.
B.C.’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) says two people have now been charged in the death of a missing Burnaby man found dead in Mission last week. Forty-five-year-old Masood Masjoody, a former professor at SFU, was reported missing by concerned neighbours in early February. A man from Maple Ridge and a woman from North Vancouver are now facing first-degree murder charges.
A previous version of this video stated that two men had been charged with murder. In fact, the individuals are a man from Maple Ridge and a woman from North Vancouver.
Masjoody’s remains were found in Mission on March 6. The former Simon Fraser University mathematics professor was last seen on Feb. 2, according to the Integrated Homicide Investigations Team (IHIT).
IHIT Sgt. Freda Fong said earlier this month that investigators believe the killing was “targeted,” and that Masjoody, 45, had “ongoing disputes” with the suspects. A cause of death has not been released.
Circumstances preceding his death play out in a sprawling legal record that is a result of Masjoody’s many lawsuits that kept the courts so occupied that he was branded a “vexatious litigant” by a judge, castigated for wasting precious court resources.
Several of his lawsuits allege he was the victim of harassment and defamation, and his eccentric legal antics saw him clash with former colleagues at Simon Fraser University, judges, lawyers, media and others, including Razavi and Soltani.
In B.C. Supreme Court civil filings, Masjoody accused Soltani of “alignment” with the Iranian regime, while other legal documents referring to his accusations say that Razavi had “loyalty” to Iran’s intelligence services.
The claims were denied by both suspects in subsequent replies to the legal action and the claims have not been tested in court.
Murder concerns
The Canadian Press has reported on two affidavits that reference murder concerns.
An affidavit filed by Masjoody last year said that he had been warned by a member of a group that involved Soltani and Razavi that they “sought a substance with which to murder me.”
A second affidavit from Rosita Fatemi described a meeting she had with Soltani and Razavi at a Park Royal mall parking lot in West Vancouver, the heart of British Columbia’s Iranian community.
The document said Fatemi and her two fellow founding directors of a B.C. non-profit society opposed to the Iranian regime were there to discuss a lawsuit filed by Masjoody.
At the meeting, Razavi accused Fatemi of communicating with Masjoody, and took her phone without her consent when she tried to refute the accusation, the affidavit says.
During the same meeting, Fatemi alleged that Soltani wanted to know how to “silence” someone, in a way that would “look natural.”
“She also asked me for a drug substance to ‘get rid of him.’ Based on the context of the discussion, I understood her to be referring to the plaintiff (Masjoody) and causing him to be murdered,” Fatemi said in the affidavit.
None of the allegations have been tested in court.
Masjoody was an outspoken critic of both Iran’s Islamic regime and the royalist faction of the diaspora community, which supports the exiled former crown prince Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi is now jockeying to lead the country should the Iranian administration topple as a result of current U.S. and Israel bombing campaigns.
Pahlavi, too, was a target of legal action by Masjoody, who accused him of defamation. In an affidavit, Pahlavi denied even knowing Masjoody, and denied involvement in any harassment, defamation or “conspiracy” against him.
Kaveh Shahrooz, lawyer and senior fellow at Macdonald Laurier Institute who studies the Iranian regime at home and abroad, told CBC’s The Early Edition that he knew of Masjoody through limited online exchanges.
“I knew he was very vocal against Iran’s regime and I knew that in recent years he was very vocal against the crown prince Reza Pahlavi. He alleged the Mr. Pahlavi’s circle had been infiltrated by Iranian intelligence authorities. That, perhaps, may have been his claim against [Razavi and Soltani], who are now alleged to have killed him.”
Shahrooz said Masjoody’s murder has created fear among Iranian Canadian activists like himself.
“We have been sounding the alarm for many years to Canadian officials that transnational aggression is a real thing. Iran’s regime has a track record of carrying out acts of violence and murder abroad,” he said.
A date for Razavi and Soltani’s bail hearing has yet to be set. A publication ban prevents the reporting of details heard in court.
The case will eventually move to B.C. Supreme Court, the judicial level where murder trials are held in the province.