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Court File No. SC-15-00011312 -000 SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE SMALL CLAIMS COURT 5 B E T W E E N: SOHEILA AMINTORABI 10 Plaintiff - and - ARSHAM PARSI 15 Defendant P R O C E E D I N G S A T T R I A L BEFORE DEPUTY JUDGE C. ASHBY on January 8, 2018 at TORONTO, Ontario 20 25 APPEARANCES C. Wanless Counsel for the Plaintiff 30 B. Amouzgar Counsel for the Defendant M. Evans Counsel for the Defendant (i) Table of Contents SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE SMALL CLAIMS COURT 5 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S W I T N E S S E S WITNESSES Examination Cr- Re- In-Chief Examination Examination 10 JEFTOVIC, Mark 26-58 59-71 - HOMILY, Minoo 73-92 92-152 - 15 E X H I B I T S EXHIBIT NUMBER ENTERED ON PAGE 1 Plaintiff’s Document Brief Volume 1 25 2 Plaintiff’s Document Brief Volume 2 26 3 Schedule C of Defendant’s Report 43 20 4 Email from Defendant’s Counsel 53 A Dictionary Entries 111 25 Legend [sic] - Indicates preceding word has been reproduced verbatim and is not a transcription error. (ph) - Indicates preceding word spelled phonetically. [Indiscernible] - Indicates where a word or phrase is 30 impossible to discern, and all avenues to ascertain what was said have been exhausted. (i) Table of Contents Transcript Ordered: January, 17, 2018 Transcript Completed: January 24, 2018 5 Ordering Party Notified: January 24, 2018 10 15 20 25 30 4. Amintorabi v. Parsi MONDAY, JANUARY 8TH, 2018: COURT REGISTRAR: For the record, this is 11312 Soheila Amintorabi, plaintiff and Arsham Parsi, defendant. Mr. Corey Walness is 5 counsel for the plaintiff and Mr. Behrouz Amouzgar for the defendant, and also Mr. Mark Evans is counsel for the defendant. And there is a Farsi Interpreter and the name is B. Kashami. 10 THE INTERPRETER: Yes, good morning, Your Honour. THE COURT: All right. Good morning. We should swear the interpreter in first. THE INTERPRETER: I’ll affirm. 15 COURT REGISTRAR: Just state your name for the record here. THE INTERPRETER: Bahram Kashami. BAHRAM KASHAMI: INTERPRETER AFFIRMED - 20 Farsi/English THE COURT: Thank you. THE INTERPRETER: Your Honour, I’ve been asked to stand by for the proceedings except for 25 when the testimony is given, then I’ll be interpreting everything. THE COURT: Yes. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Ready to go? MR. WANLESS: Yes. I don’t believe actually 30 there are any preliminary matters and if there are not, I will just make my opening statement. 5. Amintorabi v. Parsi THE COURT: Yes. MR. WANLESS: Okay. THE COURT: Is there -- are there any other issues.... 5 MR. WANLESS: Thankfully.... THE COURT: No housekeeping? MR. WANLESS: No housekeeping matters. THE COURT: All right. 10 OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. WANLESS: MR. WANLESS: This is a defamation case. It is about an anonymous and defamatory website that attacks my client. It as about an 15 anonymous email sent to Amnesty International that attacks Mrs. Amin, and it is about Facebook postings and messages sent from the defendant, Arsham Parsi’s personal Facebook account, which share, promote and defend the 20 postings on the website at issue, the website that attacks Ms. Amin. The website in question is called JusticeforLGBT.com. It is mostly in Farsi, 25 though some postings are in English. The website seems to have been set up for the sole purpose of anonymously attacking my client, Shadi Amin and destroying her reputation. It’s my view that the website is vicious. And 30 you will hear the content of the website, falsely accuses Ms. Amin of having a criminal record. It accuses her of committing rape and 6. Amintorabi v. Parsi emotional abuse. It accuses her of being involved in money laundering, of abusing and taking advantage of refugees, of being involved in corruption and financial scandals 5 and exploiting refugees. This website is still on the internet. Anyone can access it two years after it was originally set up, two years plus after it was originally set up. The court will hear evidence regarding my 10 client, Ms. Shadi Amin. Ms. Amin was born in Iran but because of who she is and the work that she does, she is not able to live there. She is now a refugee and she lives in Germany. And she has travelled from Germany to be here 15 in court today. The court will hear that Ms. Amin has built a career as a respected Iranian activist in the areas of women’s rights, human rights and 20 lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-sexual rights, especially pertaining to Iran. It is more than a career, it is a life calling. She runs a non-profit organization dedicated to these causes, in fact, more than one. And she 25 is dependant on her good name in order to do the good work that she does because of the nature of her work and the fact that the Iranians involved in the struggle for human rights are located in multiple countries all 30 over the world. As a result of this, Ms. Amin’s work, much of it, is conducted online. And the community that she interacts with is 7. Amintorabi v. Parsi largely an online community. That makes the website all the more damaging. And that the website is in Farsi, makes it all the more damaging. 5 Ms. Amin will testify regarding the significant damage done to her reputation as a result of this website and the other defamatory postings and the damage done to her 10 ability to engage in the causes that she advocates so tirelessly for. I do not expect much of what I have just said to be controversial. I do not expect that the 15 defendants will contest that there is in fact a website, that this website defames my client by making false accusations against her, or that it is seriously damaging to her reputation. The main question that this court 20 will have to answer is who is responsible for this website, JusticeforLGBT.com. And this is the question that is keenly disputed between the parties. 25 The defendant has taken this -- the position in this litigation that he has absolutely nothing to do with the website whatsoever and he has absolutely no idea who is behind it. Yet the court will hear significant and 30 diverse evidence that points very much to Mr. Parsi being centrally involved in the creation of this website and in the maintenance of this 8. Amintorabi v. Parsi website. The evidence will show that Mr. Parsi either alone or with others, engaged in the concerted action in order to set up the website and publish its defamatory postings. 5 The evidence will also show - and this is key - that Mr. Parsi posted defamatory statements relating to JusticeforLGBT.com on his own personal Facebook messenger to -- to others. 10 A brief review of the evidence that is coming. Our expert will be here today. I think he’s a little a bit late because of the weather. So he won’t be the first witness. But he will be here today to show that when the defamatory 15 website JusticeforLGBT.com was first set up, it was set up as the part of another website. This second website was controlled by Mr. Parsi before JusticeforLGBT.com was transferred to another unknown account. The 20 evidence will show that the defamatory website, JusticeforLGBT.com was originally set up using Mr. Parsi’s private webhosting account. The evidence will show that the -- the time that JusticeforLGBT.com was 25 established, Mr. Parsi’s webhosting account was hosting three websites: Mr. Parsi’s personal website, Mr. Parsi’s organization’s website and the defamatory website JusticeforLGBT.com. Second, the evidence will 30 show that after the website JusticeforLGBT.com first started publishing its postings, Mr. Parsi went out of his way to actively both 9. Amintorabi v. Parsi promote the website and to defend the articles published on JusticeforLGBT.com. The evidence will show that Mr. Parsi clearly has animus against Ms. Amin and has shown through his 5 actions that he is willing to share and to promote the anonymous and defamatory website that he now says he has nothing to do with. Mr. Parsi spread the defamatory website on Facebook along with supported comments. And 10 he also went out of his way to contact various individuals in Ms. Amin’s community to not only let them know about the existence of this website, but also to defend the defamatory website’s -- or sorry, the defamatory 15 statements made on JusticeforLGBT.com. In particular, the court will hear from Ms. Minoo Homily. Ms. Homily wrote an article defending Ms. Amin from the attacks on another blog. Ms. Homily went out of her way to say that 20 this JusticeforLGBT.com was unfair to Ms. Amin. Mr. Parsi read Ms. Homily’s defence of Ms. Amin and he reacted to it. And -- and on his own initiative, he contacted this woman and personally vouched for the truth of the 25 contents of JusticeforLGBT.com. And I’m quoting from one of Mr. Parsi’s messages: Letters regarding rape cases are true. The story regarding threatening people to make them put a like on their post is 30 valid, as are many stories about the refugee. He also said, and I quote again: 10. Amintorabi v. Parsi I stand by the rape letter and I have posted it on my Facebook.
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