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Members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, gather around the coffins of their fellow guards, who were killed by a suicide car bomb, during the funerals in Isfahan, Iran February 16, 2019. Photo: Morteza Salehi/Tasnim News Agency/via REUTERS.
A leading Jewish group has filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government for failing to enforce a House of Commons motion to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.
The motion was passed by the House in 2018 and called on the government to “immediately designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a listed terrorist entity under the Criminal Code of Canada.” It condemned Iran “for its ongoing sponsorship of terrorism around the world.”
Thus far, the government has not acted on the motion.
“We made it clear last month that no further delays by the government would be accepted by Canadians,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “Unfortunately, there is no alternative at this point to legal recourse.”
“It is intolerable that 20 months have elapsed since this important motion passed, and no action has been taken by our government to implement it,” he added.
Referring to the US assassination of IRGC head Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3, Mostyn said, “Today, the Islamist regime is undoubtedly seeking to avenge the killing of its IRGC General. Canadians are more at risk than ever by the IRGC. Our safety concerns are pragmatic, moral, and urgent.”
“The government must act immediately — and our lawsuit aims to ensure this immediate action,” he said.
The IRGC has committed acts of terrorism against Jewish institutions in the past, most famously the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Argentina, killing dozens.
Since 2012, Canada has listed the Quds Force, the IRGC unit that runs Iran’s global terror operations, as a terror group. Activists have long advocated for designating the IRGC in its entirety, as the US did last April.
If the IRGC is placed on the terror list, it will be illegal for it to operate in Canada and for Canadian citizens to support or fund it.