10-month stay in Russian airport ends with flight to Canada

By JONATHAN WOODWARD
Friday, March 16, 2007

After 10 months in a Moscow airport sleeping on cold floors, eating scraps from passengers and bathing in the departure lounge toilets, an Iranian refugee and her children finally landed in Canada.

Zahra Kamalfar collapsed with shock and happiness into the arms of her supporters, and a brother she hadn't seen in 13 years, mere moments after she descended an escalator Thursday into the arrivals area of the Vancouver International Airport.

"Canada, thank you so much," Kamalfar, 47, said in stilted English, to an assemblage of news media and airport staff, before she stumbled to the floor.

"I want a bright future for myself," she said.

"I don't think about anything. I feel free now. I will see the sea, the sky, the sun. I say to everyone: Freedom is very important. Thank you, Canada."

However, before the family's ordeal was over, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police extended Kamalfar's legal limbo in airports when they stopped her for about an hour for allegedly smoking on the plane, an Air Canada flight via Toronto. An RCMP spokesman said charges were possible, but none had been laid.

The story of Zahra Kamalfar's journey to Canada spans two years, four countries, many legal appeals and a nearly interminable wait in the departure lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow.

Kamalfar and her husband, Iman, were Dervishes, members of a branch of Sufism that believes in mystical rituals. The Shah of Iran had granted them land. In 1979, when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, the Kamalfar's politics and religion suddenly became unpopular.

In 1986, Mr. Kamalfar was arrested for handing out leaflets calling for the return of the Shah, and was imprisoned for two years. The family lay low, and Ms. Kamalfar ran a boutique selling women's clothes while raising their two children. But in 2001, they returned to passing out leaflets, protested against Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and the death of several university students, and converted to Christianity.

In 2004, Mr. and Ms. Kamalfar were arrested again. Ms. Kamalfar was violently interrogated for "collaborating" in anti-government activities, and she heard through fellow inmates that her husband was killed while in police custody.

The next year, Ms. Kamalfar arranged for a 48-hour-release from prison, and obtained false travel papers. She and the children fled overland to Turkey and booked a flight to Canada.

The flight took them to Moscow and then Frankfurt, where her travel papers were questioned. She was sent back to Moscow, and held at a detention facility for 13 months.

Ten months ago, that facility was shut down and dozens of people claiming refugee status were immediately deported. The European Court of Human Rights put a stay on her deportation order after an appeal by a U.S. lawyer.

Unable to return to Russia, and without a country that would accept her, Kamalfar and her children were stuck in the Moscow airport.

"Aeroflot (Russia's international airline) gave her vouchers, and they got what little they could out of the food kiosks and slept on the floor," said Washington lawyer Eileen O'Connor. "They had to wash in the bathrooms. When we met them they had blankets, because the airport gets very cold in the winter."

O'Connor and other lawyers made an appeal to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on the family's behalf.

"The hardest thing was to prove her story and get the UNHCR to listen," lawyer Olga Anisimova said on the phone from Russia.