B.C. RCMP find body of Iranian man critical of Tehran regime, charge two with murder

The body of Masood Masjoody has been found and two people have been charged with his murder.

B.C. RCMP began a homicide investigation following the disappearance of the Iranian activist who had been a vocal critic of Iran’s ruling regime.

In recent weeks, investigators from the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team followed several leads and undertook multiple searches. In a release emailed to National Post on Saturday, IHIT said that police located Masjoody’s remains in Mission, B.C.

On Friday, 48-year-old Mehdi Ahmadzadeh Razavi of Maple Ridge and 45-year-old Arezou Soltani of North Vancouver were arrested in connection with the alleged homicide of Masjoody. The BC Prosecution Service approved one count of first-degree murder against each suspect.

“We understand this case has impacted the Iranian community and has generated widespread concern and public interest,” states IHIT in the release.

“While the motive is still under investigation, we can say the victim and two accused were known to each other,” says Sgt. Freda Fong of IHIT.

Now that the case is before the courts, IHIT says no further information will be released.

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

The RCMP’s integrated homicide investigations team (IHIT) had previously said the evidence collected by investigators indicated foul play.

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

Masjoody was known as an online activist critical of the Iranian regim e. Police were examining whether his activism around events in Iran was connected to his disappearance.

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

Masjoody 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 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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