The RCMP have won the latest round in a 10-year battle over a cadet's complaint of discrimination based on ethnic background.

Ali Tahmourpour says he was unfairly tossed out of the Mounties' Regina training academy. He says instructors at the facility mocked his religion and were biased against him.

On one occasion, when Tahmourpour signed his signature in Persian script, an instructor asked, "What kind of ... language is that, or is it something you made up?"

Tahmourpour, who is Canadian but was born in Iran, was accepted as a cadet in 1999. He was dismissed from the program after about four months, shortly after the halfway point.

His discrimination complaint was initially found to be valid by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The RCMP was ordered to pay substantial compensation and costs of the case, a total estimated at $1 million, as well as offer Tahmourpour another shot at becoming a Mountie.

The force appealed and, in a decision published this week to judicial databases, a Federal Court said the whole case needs to be re-examined.

More evidence needed

The court said findings in favour of Tahmourpour were not reasonable. In part, the court said the tribunal relied too much on Tahmourpour's interpretation of events at the academy.

"A finding of discrimination must require more than just a complainant's own perception that he has been identified as different," Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn wrote.

"If it were otherwise, there would be no need to adjudicate complaints, as every complaint would be well-founded because every complainant perceives that he or she has been treated differently on the basis of one or more of the prohibited grounds of discrimination."

Zinn's ruling set aside the decision that favoured Tahmourpour and orders the case be heard again, with a new tribunal. No date has been set for that.

Since his experiences in Regina, Tahmourpour moved to Ontario.