OTTAWA AND TEHRAN DISCUSSING THE RETURN OF Ms. KAZEMI’S BODY
PARIS 14 July (IPS) As a four-ministers investigation team started investigation the death of an Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist while in custody, Canadian authorities made contradictory statements on their request for having the body returned to Canada for autopsy.
Ms. Zahra Kazemi, 54, died last Friday night in a Tehran hospital belonging to the Revolutionary Guards of what Iranian officials said was due to brain stroke she suffered during interrogation at the Intelligence Ministry.
She was arrested on 23 June while taking pictures outside the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and taken to the Information (Intelligence) Ministry, where she was reportedly treated as a spy and allegedly beaten unconscious by interrogators.
Canada said on Sunday that it has withdrawn a request to the Iranian authorities to repatriate for autopsy the body of Ms. Kazemi on the ground that her mother has granted permission for her daughter to be buried in Iran.
The mother of Zahra Kazemi, who lives in Iran, "has signed documents authorising the burial from today", the French news agency AFP quoted Mr. Reynald Doiron, a spokesman for the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The announcement came after Ms. Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hachemi, called for the repatriation of his mother's body to Canada.
Hachemi told journalists that his grandmother would not have granted the authorisation unless pressured by Iranian authorities.
"We are requesting that the Iranian authorities repatriate the body, in order to assist her son, but if the family have a change of heart, our request would be withdrawn", Doiron said, adding that according to the laws of the Koran, a mother has the over-riding say in what happens to a body.
But on Monday, the Ministry, under mounting pressures from the public opinion and press and human rights organisations, said it was in discussion with the Iranian government for the transfer of the body.
Informed Iranian sources in Montreal, Canada, told Iran Press Service that Ottawa reversed its position after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami instructed ministers of Justice, Intelligence, Islamic Guidance and Interior to look into the case the "determine the exact causes and circumstances" of the journalist’s death.
Hachemi told a news conference that he's not satisfied with Iran's pledge to have four cabinet ministers conduct an inquiry.
"Don't send me your condolences when your government killed my mother, tortured her and still doesn't respond to my demands", Hachemi told journalists.
However, officials at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran have said that Ms. Kazemi’s body had been sent to forensic.
"We are looking into getting confirmation on where the body is at this point", the spokeswoman told "The Globe And Mail".
Iranian jurists like Dr Karim Lahiji, for their part pointed out that since the Iranian regime does not accept dual citizenship for its nationals in the one hand and the fact that Ms. Kazemi had traveled to Iran with an Iranian passport on the other, "there was nothing Ottawa could do legally for the transfer of the body".
But Ms. Shirin Ebadi, an outstanding lawyer in Tehran said legality aside; the family can bury the corpse "wherever they want".
Also Islamic jurists say not only the Sharia, or Islamic laws orders that a dead must be buried "the soonest possible", but also it is "humanly natural that a mother wants her child be buried near her". ENDS JOURNALIST DIES 14703