Canada’s ministry of citizenship and immigration wants to deport Kavoos Soofi to his native Iran as a failed asylum seeker: but an Iranian official says the country doesn’t want him.

“Any Iranian citizen who wants to live in another country can return if he wishes, but nobody can force him,” an official in the Iranian embassy told the Star. “He must come to the embassy and make the request. If (Soofi) was sent back, he would be returned to Canada.”

Soofi has been fighting for asylum since 2008, and experts say that his conversion to an Eastern religion, public criticism of Islam and its revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and protests against Iran’s government would put him at risk of arrest and a possible death sentence.

The 43-year-old, whose case was featured in last week’s Sunday Star, was detained in January for a month, pending deportation, but a federal court judge granted a stay of removal while his case is reviewed.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Border Services Agency had obtained a travel document for Soofi from the Iranian embassy because his passport had expired, and bought him a one-way ticket to Tehran.

The agency told him to use the document to board a flight to Germany — but from there, his expired passport would admit him to Iran.

However, the Iranian official said, “we didn’t issue any travel document for him (to enter Iran). We didn’t engage in this deportation.”

Hutan Golsorkhi, a Toronto Iranian-Canadian who heads the Association of North American Ethnic Journalists, said that Soofi’s public rejection of Islam would anger many in Iran.

“It is one thing to believe, and another thing to make a public spectacle of what is in one’s heart,” he said in an email to the Star. “About 30 years ago, over 97 per cent of Iranians voted for an Islamic Republic government . . . If Mr. Kavoos wants to go to street corners and publicly preach a cult which is offensive to the official religions of Iran . . . that may be contrary to the laws of the nation.”

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