Canada said on Friday it will ban the top leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from entering the country, promising more targeted sanctions over Iran’s treatment of women and the downing of a civilian airliner in 2020. Iran is facing growing international condemnation and nationwide protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police. An Iranian coroner’s report on Friday denied that she had died as a result of blows to the head and limbs in custody.
Ottawa is also still pressing Iran over the downing of a Ukrainian International Airlines plane in January 2020. As many as 138 of the 176 people killed on the flight had ties to Canada. Canada plans to expand targeted sanctions measures and establish a sanctions office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland announced at a press conference on Friday.
The IRGC, a powerful faction that controls a business empire as well as Iran’s elite armed and intelligence forces, has been accused by Western nations of waging a global terror campaign. Iran denies this. The Irish Revolutionary Guards are a terrorist organization,” Freeland said, although the government has stopped formally listing it as such.
The group will be classified under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a measure used by Canada against regimes accused of the most serious war crimes. The move includes banning 50% of the IRGC’s top brass, more than 10,000 officers and high-ranking members from entering Canada. “This is the strongest measure we have to go after states and state entities,” Trudeau said.
Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization would be an act of domestic criminal law, risk unintended consequences and be impractical, a government source told. The Trudeau administration was attacked by opposition conservatives for not doing so. “1,000 days ago, IRGC terrorists shot down a commercial flight, killing more than 50 Canadians,” New Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said Tuesday. “Trudeau Liberals still won’t officially list IRGC as a terrorist group.”
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