Dr. Saren Azer, a much-lauded Kurdish-Canadian medical doctor, left Canada the same way he entered – under a cloud of suspicion.
Once a highly successful internal medicine specialist and humanitarian, Azer is now a man on the run.
In a long interview with the Gazette, one-time St. Albert resident Alison Jeffrey Azer, Saren’s ex-wife, provided an account of her life with Azer.
Jeffrey Azer alleges he abducted their four children while on a holiday trip to France and Germany in August and has taken them to a Kurdish controlled area in Iraq.
The children are girls Sharvahn, 11, Rojevahn, 9 and boys Dersim, 7, and three-year-old Meitan.
Jeffrey Azer said that an airport security camera photograph shows Azer arriving at Sulaymaniayah Airport in northern Iraq on Aug. 15 carrying his youngest son. For three months, this was the last confirmed sighting.
Back in April 2014, Jeffrey Azer was granted shared custody of the children by the provincial family court of British Columbia (Supreme Court of British Columbia). This order granted her control over the four children’s passports to protect them from being taken out of Canada without her consent.
However, the B.C. Court later granted a further order giving Saren Azer permission to travel to Paris and Germany with the children for a vacation in August 2015. The court stipulated the children contact their mother every 48 hours during the trip.
Jeffrey Azer says the children departed the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island for Paris and landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Aug. 6. When Jeffrey Azer did not receive a phone call on Aug. 15 as designated, she contacted authorities.
Nine days later, Comox Valley RCMP obtained a Canada-wide arrest warrant for Saren Azer, also known as Salahaddin Mahmudi-Azer. It is in relation to charges of abduction in contravention of a custody order, contrary to Section 282 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
In addition, INTERPOL issued a red alert on Azer and a yellow alert for the children. Meanwhile Jeffrey Azer, with a core support group, has mounted an extensive operation to bring her children home.
The children have been found in northern Iraq. However, Jeffrey Azer, now also in Iraq, is not at liberty to disclose their whereabouts. She says the father is not prepared to release his children.
“The fact that I was on the phone on (Aug.) 11and 13 with their dad in the background knowing that he had tickets in his hand to take them away from everything they knew, everything that was familiar, everything they loved. I don’t know who could do that,” Jeffrey Azer said.
Many people who know the couple are in agreement. Upon initially hearing of the alleged abduction, they shake their heads or shrug their shoulders in shocked disbelief.
Who is Saren Azer? What motivated his actions? Jeffrey Azer provided the Gazette with a detailed account of Azer’s background.
Born in Mahabad, Iran, Saren Azer was a young Kurdish medical student and part of medical relief teams that treated Iraqi Kurds who suffered from Saddam Hussein’s chemical bombardment in 1988. The region of Kurdistan spans four countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Later, as a Canadian internist, he would lead humanitarian trips to Kurdish controlled areas in co-operation with Health Partners International Of Canada starting in 2007. His objective was to bring medical supplies and equipment to refugee camps.
Jeffrey Azer said that although born in Iran, Azer had become persona non grata in his birthplace after speaking out about government policies and being accused of taking items from hospitals to supply the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party.
The Canadian government cites the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as “listed entities” on its terrorist watch site at http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-eng.aspx.
Jeffrey Azer also believes that when her ex-husband immigrated to Canada, CSIS had reservations about him.
“When he came to Canada in 1994, he got refugee status. But they, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service did not give him a landed status, did not give him a security clearance because they suspected he had ties to PKK,” she said.
By the time Jeffrey Azer met the man she was to marry, he was a rising star working on a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Alberta. His research was on a specific type of cell that triggered asthma.
Leaning more to the liberal arts, Jeffrey Azer had earned an undergraduate degree in politics and an MBA in business. She was employed at the Alberta Lung Association and was organizing a gala to honour those in the field.
“I met him because he was a scholarship recipient of one of our awards. I fell in love with him very quickly thereafter. He was extremely charismatic, charming, had worldly good looks and at least appeared to me as pretty crazy for me, too.”
But in looking back, she believes they were mismatched.
“You know, a white-middle class St. Albert girl that went to the University of Alberta and was a member of a sorority. My family was Red Tory and I came up from that political background. And there I was, meeting someone that fled the Iranian regime, came to Canada through a circuitous journey. I guess I was really drawn to him. He was unlike anyone I had ever, ever met before.”
Jody Korchinski, a close friend of Jeffrey Azer since their high school days in St. Albert, recalls her first impression of Saren Azer.
“When I met him through Alison, he was a very passionate advocate for causes he believed in. I found him very engaging and Alison was absolutely in love with him and her friends supported that relationship.”
In January 2002, the young couple married and by July was living in Vancouver where Azer could continue his postdoctoral research. At this point he was still legally considered a refugee.
In the fall, the Azers hosted Svend Robinson, NDP MP for Burnaby and his partner at a dinner. They came to know each other working on social justice issues, and Jeffrey Azer says Robinson helped her husband gain landed immigrant status.
By the fall of 2003, Azer applied to the University of Calgary’s accelerated medical program and was accepted. The couple’s first child Sharvahn was also born at this time.
Jeffrey Azer alleges that after the birth of their first child, the couple started to have relationship difficulties.
“Everything changed professionally, financially. I was starting to see coming out of him a real gender definition of who does what and especially now that I’m a mom.”
After several moves back and forth from Calgary to British Columbia with children in tow, divisions in the relationship widened.
In 2012, the couple separated. Troubled by the separation, Jeffrey Azer returned to her St. Albert roots and stayed with her parents at the old homestead on Morgan Crescent.
“I needed a sanctuary. I needed to be as close to my origins as I could be. I needed to be living under the same roof as the people who could provide me sanctuary. You know what they say. In times of trauma, you go back to your roots,” said the Paul Kane High alumna.
Elizabeth van Egteren describes her younger sister as a wonderful personality who loved to write and hang out with friends.
“She was an academic. She was in highland dancing for years with St. Albert Dance Society. She loved politics. When she was part of the PC youth movement, she met Brian Mulroney at a youth rally in Ottawa.”
But the vibrant Jeffrey Azer that rubbed elbows with political leaders had turned into a shadow of her former self.
Under the safety net provided in St. Albert, the children flourished. The two older girls were enrolled at Elmer Gish School and made fast friends with other students. The first time they went swimming was at Servus Place. Azer had forbidden swimming because it exposed too much skin.
“I couldn’t believe how strong and beautiful and how much fun they were having. I had a bathing suit on for the first time in 13 years and I felt like I was being baptized.”
Each of the children has a different personality says Jeffrey Azer.
“Sharvahn is charismatic. She’s funny and magnetic. She makes friends easily and has a strong personality. She can get angry quickly and get over it quickly.”
“Rojevahn is highly empathetic. She feels deeply. She walks in a room and knows who is happy, who is sad and who has had a bad day. She sees things in people.”
“Dersim is super, super, super smart and logical. Give him a Lego kit and it’s done in two hours.”
“Meitan is just delicious. He’s hilarious and knows he’s hilarious. The boys have eyelashes that don’t stop and Meitan knows how to use them.”
Meanwhile back in British Columbia courts, Jeffrey Azer commenced legal proceedings for sole custody and guardianship of the children. In May 2013, the Supreme Court of B.C. ordered that the parents share custody, and that the children reside in Comox.
Jeffrey Azer says that she was surprised her ex-husband was permitted to take the children abroad. Permission was granted after a family lawyer and parental co-coordinator completed an assessment and handed her findings to a judge.
Thousands of people have joined the campaign to help Jeffrey Azer. Many have hosted fundraisers to pay for legal bills, written letters to parliamentarians and used social media to create awareness both here and in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Melissa Zawaduk, a Grade 3 teacher at Elmer Gish who taught Sharvhan during the family’s brief stay in the city, contacted Edmonton-St. Albert’s MPs on several occasions.
She emailed Brent Rathgeber three times before receiving a response. In his defence, politicians were on the campaign trail for the October federal elections at the time.
The tone of his four-paragraph letter was encouraging and even provided information to further assist Jeffrey Azer. In closing he added, “Should I be re-elected, I would be happy to contact the minister of foreign affairs to discuss the matter further.”
Since Rathgeber was not re-elected, Zawaduk, among hundreds of others, wrote to newly-elected MP Michael Cooper.
Cooper monitored the situation, and on Thursday, Dec. 17 sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressing his concern for the children and urging the government to take immediate action.
In the letter he wrote, “These young Canadian citizens are being held captive in an area in Iraq where there is escalating violence and ongoing warfare … They are in imminent danger.”
Speaking from his St. Albert constituency, Cooper stated, “It’s just a matter of keeping the issue on the radar. It’s a critical time for the children and it’s imperative the government put political pressure on the Kurdistan government to take steps to rescue the children.”
Jeffrey Azer believes her ex-husband has many resources at his disposal. She told the Gazette that a court order has now frozen Azer’s bank accounts, and that his bank records have been examined. She says they reveal that he was earning $800,000 a year and he was systematically transferring $10,000 or $15,000 to an undisclosed account
“He left the country with a million (dollars).”
Jeffrey Azer has met with the RCMP, Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary Lynn Yelich and Kurdish representative from Washington Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman to name a few. She even has the ear of Qubad Talabani, deputy minister of the Kurdish region.
However, the mother of four is frustrated with lack of information trickling down the Canadian government pipeline and the slow process retrieving the children.
Jeffrey Azer has a $200,000 legal debt to pay. She has difficulty eating and sleeping and is in a fight for her life.
“These kids were let down by the courts. They were let down by the ministry of child and family development. They were let down by the police. They were let down by every place I went to.
“I have to make it right for my kids and then I have to fight on what broke down – what policies need to change, what systems need to change. Women are still undervalued in the systems of court.”
Since Saren Azer has left the country, the Gazette was unable to contact him for comment on the statements made in Jeffrey Azer’s interview.
When the Gazette contacted British Columbia RCMP for additional information, Sgt. Rob Vermeulen, senior media relations officer replied in an email.
“It (the alleged abduction) remains a very active investigation, with work being done at the national level both in the RCMP and DFAT-D. For that reason I am not able to provide any further information at this point.”
DFAT-D, now under the name of Global Affairs Canada, encompasses the departments of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
The Gazette also contacted Global Affairs for clarification and media spokesperson Rachna Mishra sent the following email.
“Government of Canada senior officials remain deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of the children, and are in regular contact with the children’s mother.
“Canada consular officials are working closely with the appropriate government authorities in Canada and abroad, including law enforcement.
In the interest of the safety of the Azer children, it would not be helpful to comment further on this case.”
