Canada Soccer Cancels June Match With Iran After Protests
Canada Soccer has cancelled a controversial friendly match with Iran’s national team after many Iranians objected to the visit of Iranian football officials.
Canada Soccer has cancelled a controversial friendly match with Iran’s national team after many Iranians objected to the visit of Iranian football officials.
The match planned to take place in Vancouver on June 5 was part of the Canadian men’s team’s preparation for World Cup in Qatar later this year.
Earlier in May as news emerged that Iranian football officials with ties to the country’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) were to accompany the team, many Canadian-Iranians launched campaigns to cancel the match.
At the forefront of the movement were families of victims who died when the IRGC shot down a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran in January 2020, killing all 176 onboard.
Hamed Esmaeilion, the chief spokesperson for the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims, in an opinion piece for Canada’s Globe and Mail last week said that soccer in Iran is controlled by the IRGC, which is expected to send members to accompany the Iranian team and said it is shocking that Canada Soccer is inviting the Iranian national team.
Later, a photo emerged showing the Iranian team’s manager Hamid Estili with a man in Tehran in April who is wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for involvement in an alleged kidnapping plot of a New York-based Iranian activist.
The decision by Canada Soccer will be seen as a victory by Iranian human rights activists who have become much more vocal and effective in Europe and North America in recent years.
The Iranian Red Crescent has reported eleven deaths and warned about the collapse of the rest of the building. So far 39 have been pulled from the rubble alive. Rescue operations cintinued Tuesday as there were as many as 50 people buried under the rubble. Three rescue workers were injured on Tuesday when another part of the building collapsed.
Saeed Hafezi, a journalist and whistle-blower, claims that Hossein Abdolbaghi, owner of one of the ten-story Metropol twin towers which collapsed Monday, was seen leaving the building half an hour before it collapsed, and authorities are lying about his death in the accident. Hafezi says he has personally spoken to a witness.
Radio Goosheh Kenar, a local internet radio station run by Hafezi, on Tuesday published an audio file sent by a man claiming to be an employee of the Abadan coroner’s office who claims officials of the coroner’s office were pressured by unidentified authorities to issue a death certificate in Abdolbaghi’s name for an unidentifiable body they brought in. The man whose voice was altered in the recording says the coroner’s office has so far not relented to outside pressure and declined to issue a death certificate.
Initially, suspicions arose right after the collapse of the building on Monday when media, including the official news agency (IRNA), reported Abdolbaghi’s arrest but on Tuesday prosecutor general of Khuzestan province, Sadegh Jafari-Chegeni, told the judiciary’s news agency, Mizan News, that he died in the incident. Abdolbaghi’s identity papers were discovered on a very badly damaged and unidentifiable body in the rubble, he said, and the body was eventually identified as belonging to him, officials claimed, without saying who made the identification.
A photo taken from CCTV footage in the area has also been circulating on social media allegedly showing Abdolbaghi running away after the incident. Dariush Memar, a journalist currently residing in London, in a tweet Monday said he had met Abdolbaghi in Iran many times and he can confirm that the man in the photo is highly likely to be him, “unless a photo of his body is shown at the coroner’s office by the justice department of Abadan.”
Abdolbaghi, 40, is a well-known entrepreneur in Khuzestan with alleged strong connections with influential officials and centers of power. In 2018 the ministry of industries, mines and trade named him as the top entrepreneur of the Arvand Free Zone in Khuzestan.
In an article published in August 2020 in Feydus, an Iranian news website, Memar accused Abdolbaghi of corruption. “His formula for amassing wealth, like many others in Iran today, is very simple: Clever management of connections and opportunities based on rente.” ‘Rente’ is a French word used in Persian to imply privileges resulting from undue influence.
He also had close connections with the police and security forces who once gave an award.
The head of Iran’s Construction Engineering Organization, Hamzeh Shakib, on Monday said adding three extra stories to the original plan built illegally had caused the tragedy of the building’s collapse. He also said the organization had several times reported critical faults in the construction of the building, including in their most recent report, but the municipality of Abadan which was responsible for stopping the construction ignored the warnings.
Authorities say they have arrested ten officials including the current mayor of Abadan and two former mayors, for negligence leading to the tragedy of the building’s collapse.
