At a press conference, on October 7 2017, with James Shaw and other Green party MPs on the day that Golriz Gharhaman was elected to parliament she stated:

“I used to put genocidaires and war criminals on trial”

That busts her totally on her claims that before and since the election she had been totally upfront with Kiwi voters about her past.

That statement is an abject lie. She did no such thing. Firstly, she wasn’t in a position to put them on trial. Secondly in Rwanda and in The Hague she was defending genociaires and war criminals, not putting them on trial. Thirdly, she is inflating her own abilities, skills and actual involvement in those trials.

She then says later that:

“That really speaks to the Green party’s and NZ’s values”

Really? The Green party’s values? What are those?

She is an unethical Green who doesn’t know right from wrong.

She also stated:

“My dream has come from standing up for the most vulnerable”

Yeah because the guys she was defending on genocide charges and war crimes allegations were truly vulnerable. If she had in fact come from standing up for the vulnerable she would have been in Rwanda and The Hague putting these genocidal maniacs away, not defending them. If she truly was for the vulnerable she would have not defended a genocidal maniac who was fighting extradition back to Rwanda to face justice.

She has not stood up for the vulnerable, she has stood up for the powerful, murdering, killers. What she did for the vulnerable was to diminish crimes, excuse genocide, and obfuscate in court and delay. That isn’t standing up for the vulnerable victims, that is stomping all over their already considerable suffering.

After Metiria Turei’s fall from grace and now the ongoing lies and obfuscations from Golriz Gharhaman it is apparent that the Green party is the most unethical party in parliament. They simply cannot tell right from wrong.

She and her defenders are a piece of work. They won’t work with National, but they will work with war criminals.

Phil Quin asked on Twitter:

Well, a search of published judgments shows that yes, indeed, Golriz Gharhaman was involved in the defence of an alleged Rwandan war criminal who was seeking to have his deportation order overturned.

A Rwandan living in New Zealand, and suspected of being involved in genocide in the 1990s, is trying to secure confidentiality for witnesses in his defence.

The man, who cannot be identified, denies the allegations, and says his immigration approval should not be cancelled.

So far there has been no attempt to extradite or deport him, but he has been told his status is being reconsidered.

The Court of Appeal in Wellington was told on Thursday that, as part of that reconsideration, he wants New Zealand authorities to see the 35 witness statements he has.

However, nearly 20 of those are from witnesses who gave statements only on condition they not be shown to Rwandan authorities, the man’s lawyer, Grant Illingworth, QC, said.

The man wants an undertaking from New Zealand immigration authorities that it will not disclose the confidential statements.

The court has reserved its decision on how the statements should be treated.

Isn’t it amazing that she only seems to defend those accused of war crimes in Rwanda, and never works for the victims. This time it was in NZ.

There are two judgments regarding this suspected war criminal. The first is the High Court judgment where the ratbag was seeking to get all the information of those witnesses who support him seen and withheld from Rwandan authorities who are seeking to prosecute him. He lost that and then appealed and lost that too.

It appears though that there may well be another suspected war criminal she defended in NZ. The NZ Law Society wrote about Ghahraman on November 7 2017, just a few weeks ago.

She has also been acting for two Rwandans living in New Zealand who are being sought for extradition. The allegations relate to the brutal tribal war in 1994.

“Things are very different in Rwanda now, it’s a very repressive military dictatorship, so genocide accusations especially against political dissidents are very common and that is happening around the world, and that may well be what is happening here.”

So, it appears she is on the side of Hutu criminals, and has not a care or a thought for the victims of their violence. In this case, She has acted, in contrast to her previous claims about protecting human rights and holding the powerful to account, she was trying to prevent this accused war criminal being extradited to face charges levelled in the tribunal. She was actively defending an alleged war criminal, in NZ, to prevent him actually being held to account.

It seems her ethics around human rights are rather elastic. Phil Quin notes the elasticity:

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Phil Quin@philquin

Which NZ lawyer told this load of rubbish — straight from the genocide denier’s hymn sheet — in an attempt to stop a war criminal from being extradited to face his accusers, while comparing 1994 Rwanda favorably to today?

5:48 PM – Nov 28, 2017

•  66 Replies

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When will the Greens stop defending this woman, who is at best economical with the truth, at worst a lying defender of war criminals.

What the Greens don’t understand is that their circle jerk of virtue signalling tweeters don’t represent reality. Voters don’t think like lawyers, much less like so-called human rights lawyers. They think that these bastards should have been strung up not given a fair trial, and they really hate the lawyers, especially gobby attention seeking lawyers.

I think it is time she went.

-NZ Law Society, Fairfax, research by Sally

During her maiden speech, Golriz Ghahraman said:

This was just the backdrop to a bloody war we fought against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I remember the bombs, the sirens, running to the basement. Waiting. Mostly I remember the kids, my age, who stopped speaking because of shell shock.

You can well imagine if you were close to constant combat, or under rocket attack constantly that this may well occur. Israeli children often suffer such distress living under constant Arab rocket fire from Gaza.

The Iran- Iraq war was a particularly vicious affair, including the use of poison gas, chemical weapons, artillery and rocket fire, not to mention massed infantry attacks. It lasted eight years and killed several hundred thousand people. It was a terrible conflict. Wikipedia states that there were 100,000+ casualties on both sides of the war.

Fairfax reported that:

Ghahraman was nine when her family fled their home town of Mashhad in the post Iran-Iraq War.  

This is where things become interesting. The Iran-Iraq War was actually a rather confined affair. As you can see from the map below the fighting was confined to the immediate border area, and in particular in the southern border area immediately north of Basra.

So where is Mashhad in relation to this eight-year border war?

Is it near the border with Iraq, where the gassing, chemical weapons, bombing and missiles occurred?

The answer is no. If I used the map above I couldn’t actually show you where the location of Mashhad is because it is near the border of Turkmenistan and it would be under the key block in the top right-hand corner, the furthest possible distance in Iran that you could get to be away from the war zone. It is, in fact, 1,600kms away from the combat zones.

Perhaps she is as confused about this as she is about whether or not she was a defence or a prosecuting lawyer in war crimes tribunals? I mean she was very young at the time, and before she embarked on a journey just two years after the war ended in 1990 in which her whole family managed to get permission to travel from Tehran to Kuala Lumpur to Auckland and supposedly on to Fiji. I imagine it must have cost a considerable amount of her family’s savings to buy such expensive long-range tickets for a little holiday in Fiji at a time when a) airfares were horrendously expensive, and b) the Iranian economy was in tatters after an expensive and debilitating eight-year war.

But I digress.

During a Radio NZ profile, it quotes her as saying she was born in Mashhad. This is interesting because in order for her to claim she was bombed and shelled and witnessed shell-shocked children her family would have had to move almost 1600km CLOSER to the combat zone than where she was born.

Of course, Mashhad may have been bombed at some point. I checked Wikipedia for the City, and it seems there was some bombing of Mashhad…in 1912…at a shrine…where several people and pilgrims were killed. But it was Russia who bombed Mashhad back in 1912, long before her parents were even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes. There was another bombing in 1994, when Golriz Gharhaman was 13 years old. Perhaps it was this bombing that caused her to see shellshocked children and suffer bombs and rockets?

Well, no. Because by 1994 she was in New Zealand as an asylum seeker with her parents, and the bombing took place at a shrine which killed 25 people.

There simply is no record of her birthplace ever being involved in the Iran-Iraq war. It was simply too far away from the border areas.

Source/ Kiwiblog

So, Mashhad has only ever been bombed twice, once in 1912 and again in 1994. She wasn’t born in 1912 and wasn’t in Mashhad in 1994.

I have now reached the point where I cannot believe a word this woman says. Not a single thing she says stacks up.

What makes matters somewhat problematic for her now is that she made her claims in Parliament. There is now prima facie evidence that she misled parliament. Unfortunately, that requires a member to lay a Privileges Committee complain, but National seems rather squeamish in saying anything much at all about the apparent mis-speaking of Golriz Gharhaman. It is a serious matter to mislead parliament, surely some honourable member might like to take some action?

Now to potential weapons systems, even though we know none were ever fired at much less hit Mashhad.

It can’t have been FROG or SCUD missiles, their maximum range is only 800km. They wouldn’t have even reached Tehran and only about halfway to Mashhad. None of Iraq’s ballistic missiles, either liquid or solid fuel had anywhere near the range to be able bomb Mashhad. Artillery has a range at best of 50km.

That only leaves air delivery, or aircraft which could have bombed her…could it have been that even though we know Mashhad was never attacked, ever, during the Iran-Iraq War? They had Mirage F1, Su-20, Mig-21 and Mig-23, Mig-25, Tu-16, Tu-22, and French Super Etendards. Only the Tu-22 has sufficient combat radius to mount an air strike on Mashhad. But they would have had to fly a roundabout route to avoid anti-aircraft countermeasures as they crossed the entire country of Iran to deliver these bombs which never landed so that Golriz Gharhaman could have her recollections of bombs and shells landing causing children to be shell-shocked.

Unless she lived elsewhere, but surely she would have said that?

Or she is a big fat liar. In which case she has misled the House.