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In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an accredited 54-year-old photojournalist made the mistake of taking pictures outside Iran’s notorious Evin prison. For this crime, she was arrested and held in a solitary cell before she was raped, tortured, beaten, and killed.

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For years, members of the government in Iran tried to claim that the death of the dual Canadian-Iranian citizen was some kind of terrible accident — they were merely interrogating her and she suffered from some kind of pre-existing medical condition. Never mind the witness reports of blood coming from the woman’s face, nor the later doctor’s report that found broken fingers, missing fingernails, a skull fracture and severe bruising. Quite the medical condition, that. Still, no one in Iran was held to account.

The Kazemi case was once an international cause célèbre, and also one of the key turning points that marked the beginning of a dramatic decline in relations between Canada and Iran. But no one seems too eager to mention her anymore. It’s a little awkward considering we now seem so terribly keen to mend broken fences.