Update on State Immunity

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For those interested in recent developments in domestic state immunity acts, see earlier posts here and here, Canada has now announced that Iran will be formally listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Canada has closed its embassy in Iran and declared personae non gratae all remaining Iranian diplomats in Canada. The news release from the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) can be found here. Earlier attempts to sue Iran in Canada’s courts can be found here, here and here.

Update: In a separate news release, now available here, Canada has announced that it is listing Syria and Iran as state supporters of terrorism.

 

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  • EJIL Reports
  • Iran
  • State Immunity
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    Riccardo says

    September 8, 2012

    Many thanks for this precious update. I will quote it when reading the proofs of the following piece that I have just posted in SSRN
    http://ssrn.com/abstract=2143328
    I already quoted your blog post about Canada's terrorism exception and that of Prof Provost. Canada's practice is amazingly interesting... and lends support to those, like me, who think that, after the 3 February Judgment, 'les jeux ne sont pas faits"...
    I strongly recommend reading the judgment of the Court of Appeals in Kazemi/Hashemi v Iran (included among your links). The Court thinks that, after the ICJ Judgment, the tort exception as applied in Canada to iure imperii acts (see Schreiber) should be considered illegal under customary international law... For me, this bears witness of the negative repurcussions that the ICJ Judgment may bring about, even in an area -that of the tort exception's general applicability to iure imperii acts- where the ICJ could simply say nothing. At least in this respect, the ICJ Judgment is not simply freezing the law, it is taking the law back to where it was before decisions such as Letelier and Schreiber. But apparently the ICJ has not deterred the Canadian Goverment from adopting the terrorism exception... this is simply incredible...