The head of the Iranian national soccer team coming to Vancouver next month for a controversial exhibition game recently attended a party with a man wanted by the FBI in relation to a plot to kidnap international targets, including three people in Canada.
The April 8 birthday party in Tehran was captured on camera and photographs were posted online. At the time, a warrant had been out for the arrest of the alleged Iranian intelligence informant for almost a year.
Team manager Hamid Estili appears in the photos with Mahmoud Khazein. Khazein is facing criminal charges in the U.S. which include conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Why is he coming to Canada? Why won’t Trudeau simply bar entry to the Iranian team?
Political football: How the Iranian government intervenes in sports
… The motives of the IRGC are not purely financial. The Guards see sports as a form of social control to be exploited in pursuit of domestic policy objectives. The country’s two most popular sports, wrestling and football, attract a young male demographic, often from poor socio-economic backgrounds, that needs to be managed and directed. Furthermore, sports have a symbolic value, as policies applied to the athletic domain project ideals for society at large. Gender discrimination, for example, is reinforced through the ban against women attending football stadiums and limiting women sports.
