Iranian refugee who lived at Moscow airport for 9 months is free in Canada

Associated Press

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – An Iranian refugee who had been living with her two children at Moscow's international airport for nine months was free in Canada on Friday.

Zahra Kamalfar, a human rights activist who says she was jailed in Iran for demonstrating against the government, arrived at Vancouver International Airport on Thursday after a flight from Europe.

She burst out sobbing, then fainted, after being reunited with her brother, Nader Kamalfar, whom she hadn't seen in nearly 14 years.

Kamalfar, 47, and Anna, 17, and Davood, 12, had been living in the transit lounge of the Sheremetyevo International Airport since Russia denied them entry in May, said her Canadian lawyer Negar Azmudeh.

Canada agreed last week to accept Kamalfar and her two children after she was granted refugee status by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

“I don't know how to thank the Canada government. I say thank you, thank you, thank you so much,” she told CBC Television in broken English on Friday.

The whole story recalls the 2004 Tom Hanks movie "The Terminal," where politics beyond his control maroon an Eastern bloc tourist at New York's JFK airport for months on end. That movie, in fact, was based on the true story of another Iranian refugee, who beginning with his stranding at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris in 1988 lived there for years.

Kamalfar's plight began in July 2004 when she and her husband participated in a demonstration against the Iranian government in Tehran, said Azmudeh. They were both jailed, and Kamalfar says she was beaten in prison.

The Iranian Embassy in Ottawa did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

Her chance for escape came when she was given a two-day pass to visit her family in April 2005. When she got home, Kamalfar was told that her husband had been executed. She then fled Iran with her two children with the intention of coming to Canada where her brother lives.

The fate of her husband is uncertain, Davood Ghavami of the Iranian Canadian Congress, told The Toronto Star.

Kamalfar declined to discuss her ordeal in Iran.

“I don't like to remember because too much for me,” she said. “We need time; maybe after that I can explain for you.”

In limbo at Moscow's airport, Kamalfar received food regularly from the Russian state airliner, Aeroflot and also relied on the kindness of strangers.

“That place very hard because we don't have anything,” she said. “We cannot take shower. You cannot sleep.”

Kamalfar intends to live in the Vancouver area, already home to about 30,000 Iranians

“I want to find a job and a new life – a start for new life,” she said.