Iranian family stranded in Moscow airport to come to Canada
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 | 7:25 AM ET
CBC News
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An Iranian woman who has lived in a Russian airport for the past 10 months with her children will be allowed to come to Canada.
Zahra Kamalfar has been stranded at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport while applying for asylum in Canada, where her brother has lived for more than a decade.
Zahra Kamalfar has said she wants to live in Canada to give her children a better future.
(CBC)
She was granted refugee status by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in November 2006.
Ottawa says it will bring Kamalfar and her two children, 18-year-old Anna and 10-year-old David, to Canada as government-sponsored immigrants.
The family will travel to Vancouver to be reunited with Kamalfar's brother Nader, who hasn't seen his sister in 13 years. They are expected to arrive in Canada this week.
"I'm very happy and I want to say thanks to the Canadian government," Nader Kamalfar said.
Zahra Kamalfar arrived in Russia in 2005 after fleeing Iran during a prison sentence, her lawyer has said. She attempted to travel to Canada via Russia and Germany with phony travel papers, but was caught along the way.
Kamalfar has said Russian officials threatened to deport her to Iran and confined her to the Moscow airport, where the family used public washrooms to bathe and slept on the airport floor.
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