B.C. RCMP launches murder investigation after disappearance of Iranian man critical of Tehran regime

The B.C. RCMP has begun a homicide investigation following the disappearance of an Iranian activist who has been a vocal critic of Iran’s ruling regime.

Masood Masjoody was a math instructor at Simon Fraser University. He went missing in early February in Burnaby.

Police are searching for Masjoody’s body but have not released any further details. The RCMP’s integrated homicide investigations team (IHIT) has previously said the evidence collected by investigators indicated foul play.

National Post has reached out to the IHIT for comment, but has not yet received a response.

Meanwhile, investigators have said they believe some of Masjoody’s family and friends have important information about what happened but have not yet come forward.

Masjoody has been known as an online activist critical of the Iranian regim e. Police are examining whether his activism around events in Iran could be connected to his disappearance.

The International Organisation to Preserve Human Rights has called his case a “suspicious disappearance.”

Masjoody has repeatedly claimed that people and institutions in Canada were connected to, or enabling, the Iranian regime, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. While working as a math instructor at Simon Fraser University, he identified individuals there that he believed had links to Iranian regime programs, including ballistic missile and nuclear‑related work.

Citing warnings from then-CSIS Director David Vigneault about hostile foreign governments targeting academic institutions for technology transfer , Masjoody raised concerns about the use of Canadian university resources in ways he believed could benefit the Iranian regime.

In a l etter to then prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2021 , Masjoody said he had flagged Iranian regime programs that were involved in sensitive engineering and technology fields and warned that technologies developed in Canada could be brought back to Iran for nefarious purposes.

Masjoody also has a history of extensive civil litigation against institutions and individuals, including Simon Fraser University, the social media platform X, as well as people from the Iranian diaspora. Police have not said whether these legal disputes are related to his disappearance. In 2021 he sued SFU and colleagues alleging a “conspiracy, weaponizing my personal life against me, defamation, and wide-spread cover-up” in part enabled by “malicious efforts on behalf of Khamenei’s regime”. He lost.

Masjoody has also accused British Columbia courts of protecting “agents and enablers of the terrorist Mullahs regime in Iran,” saying judges and legal processes were shielding people he described as IRGC‑connected figures. Multiple judges have described his legal pleadings as unfounded, “vexatious” or “embarrassing,” and no court decision has upheld his claims about Iranian regime infiltration at SFU or in the Canadian judiciary.

Canadian police and security agencies have not publicly confirmed Masjoody’s allegations about named individuals or institutions being tied to the Iranian regime or IRGC.

However, a 2024 report from the France-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found Iran has turned to “clusters of foreign currency exchange brokers” to launder funds and finance proxy terrorist activities, including in Toronto and Vancouver.

Also same year, Iran is believed to have targeted prominent regime critics in Canada. For example, in November 2024, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler said he had been the target of an alleged Iranian assassination plot . The RCMP had warned Cotler, who has been an aggressive critic of Iran’s government, of an “imminent assassination attempt.”

• Canada foils Iranian plot to murder Irwin Cotler
• IHIT takes over case of Burnaby missing man

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