For two years, Antonella Mega has quietly fought for her husband’s release from an Iranian prison, putting her faith in the Canadian government and Tehran’s courts.

But with a possible death sentence hanging over Iranian-born Canadian Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, Mega has decided to go public for the first time in the hopes of drawing attention to his case.

A case, she says, with unclear allegations about spying, and little chance of appeal.

“There comes a point where you don’t know what else to do,” Mega said over coffee in a Toronto cafe this week, alternating between tears and laughter as she recounted the last two years.

Mega last saw her husband, 42, as he left their Beaches home in May 2008 for a month-long visit to his ailing mother in Tehran. It wasn’t the first time he had visited his birthplace since immigrating to Canada in 1995 and becoming a Canadian citizen.

He had wanted to go following his father’s death in 2003, but Mega begged him to stay, fearful of the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“I know it was paranoid thinking,” said Mega, an Italian-born Canadian who started a computer company with her husband but has had trouble working since his detention.

“But I was afraid and said, ‘Please don’t go. Please don’t go.’ ”

He relented, but went a year later on the anniversary of his father’s death and travelled without incident.

But shortly after his arrival in Tehran in 2008, Ghassemi-Shall’s older brother, Alborz, who lives in Tehran, was arrested and authorities seized all the family’s travel documents — including Ghassemi-Shall’s Canadian passport.

Alborz, a mechanical engineer who had spent time in the military before his retirement about five years ago, had not had problems with authorities in the past according to Mega.

When Ghassemi-Shall went at the end of May to retrieve his Iranian passport – which he would need to leave the country – he was also arrested.

The next time Mega would talk to him would be 18 months later, in November, when Ghassemi-Shall called from Evin prison.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Mega said, crying as she recalled the first time they spoke. “He said, ‘Hi honey.’ ”

“I got very scared because I had heard about Evin and I asked what section he was in,” she said. “He said, ‘You can’t ask those questions.’ ”

A few weeks later he called and this time he was crying. He said he had bad news — he had been convicted and had been told to sign his own death sentence.

It’s still unclear, Mega says, what the allegations against her husband include, and whether he faces a death sentence, or if he was granted a reprieve (as his lawyer had been told verbally) and instead has been sentenced to life.

Upon the advice of her lawyer in Iran, Giti Pourfazel, an outspoken feminist and civil rights lawyer, and Ottawa’s Foreign Affairs Department, Mega quietly waited, working on a website she hopes to soon launch that will chronicle her husband’s case.

Then two things happened this year. Ghassemi-Shall’s brother Alborz died in custody. Authorities said it was from cancer.

And Pourfazel lost her last attempt in court to have her Canadian client’s case re-opened.

Mega says her days now consist of waiting at home to receive the two or three-minute calls her husband is allowed to make each day.

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She says she spends a lot of time remembering their life, starting with the day she met Ghassemi-Shall shortly after he arrived in Canada. He was working at the Calderon shoe store in the Eaton’s Centre; she was trying on a pair of beige sling backs with a taupe tip.

And as the fairytale goes — the shoe fit.

“I put myself in his shoes. I could tell he was new to the country and I just felt for him,” she said laughing and remembering her own loneliness in Toronto when she first immigrated.

Last Friday, Mega received a call from Deepak Obhrai, Canada’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to say the government is still working on the case.

Amnesty International’s Canadian Secretary General, Alex Neve, has urged Ottawa to join forces to try to secure Ghassemi-Shall’s release.

“There seems no likelihood the case is going to be fairly assessed,” Neve said.

“It’s crucial for the Canadian government on its own, or working alongside other governments, really presses this case with Iran to seek a resolution through diplomatic and political channels.”

Traditionally Canada has not wielded much power in Iran and relations between the countries were strained with the death of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.

Kazemi died in Evin prison on July 11, 2003, almost three weeks after she was arrested for taking pictures of a student protest. Although authorities conceded she died as a result of torture and Canada temporarily recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest, no one was ever convicted in her death.

While Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, public pressure has, however, helped secure the release of other detained Canadians, Europeans and Americans.

Iranian-born Canadian Maziar Bahari, a journalist with Newsweek, was freed last October on $300,000 bail after nearly four months in detention.

On Thursday, Iranian authorities brought three American hikers who have been imprisoned in Evin for 10 months to a hotel in Tehran for a reunion with their mothers.

The three women, who had travelled to Iran to plead for the release of their children, wept and hugged during the emotional meeting broadcast on Iran’s state-run Press TV. Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31 and Josh Fattal, 27 have been held since July when arrested after crossing the Iranian border from Iraq.

Iran has accused them of working for the CIA, but the trio said they were hiking in the mountainous Kurdish region of Iraq and strayed off course.

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