ShareThisBy OLIVER MOORE
Thursday, March 15, 2007
An Iranian refugee living with her two children at Moscow's international airport for nine months was finally headed to Vancouver, B.C., Thursday.
Zahra Kamalfar says she was hoping to reach Canada via Russia and Europe when she left Iran two years ago.
She was arrested in Germany, her supporters say, and sent back to Moscow. The Russian authorities sought to deport her, but she was granted status by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Even with that designation, she and her children were stuck sleeping on the floor and bathing in public washrooms. They were not allowed to leave the airport terminal and have been living there full-time since last summer.
An international lobbying effort gradually built up steam, and the International Federation of Iranian Refugees said this week that the Canadian government had accepted them as legitimate refugees.
Kamalfar and her two children, Davood and Anna, were finally free to come to Canada, the IFIR said.
The family was expected to arrive Thursday in Vancouver, where a brother of Kamalfar lives.
The siblings have not seen each other in 13 years, but Nader Kamalfar offered his gratitude to the Canadian government for accepting his sister.
The family's case is reminiscent of "The Terminal," a 2004 Tom Hanks film about a man trapped at New York's JFK Airport after a revolution in his fictional home country invalidates his passport. The movie is popularly believed to be based on the case of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian who said the papers proving his refugee status were stolen and who ended up living at the international airport in Paris from 1988 until 2006.
Some people have all the luck
Of all the airports to have to live in for nine months, they wind up stuck in Sheremetyevo. Poor people! I wish them a good life in Canada.