Irwin Cotler nominated for Nobel Peace Prize after Iran death threat

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Canadian human rights lawyer and former justice minister Irwin Cotler has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his “steadfast courage, moral clarity, profound empathy and extensive achievements in support of universal human rights.”

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“I was utterly surprised,” Cotler told National Post on Friday morning following the news. “Nobody ever contacted me or mentioned anything to me.”

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Letters of support for the Montreal-based founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights came from prominent international figures, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Natan Sharansky, one of the most famous former Soviet refusniks, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist who was imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the Ukraine war.

“Cotler is one of the great humanitarians of our generation. He has dedicated his life to serving underprivileged populations, representing silenced voices, and promoting the loftiest of ideals: justice and freedom,” Herzog wrote in his endorsement letter. He praised Cotler for his work as Canada’s first special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, a role he served in from 2020 to 2023.

“Cotler’s lifetime of work embodies the very essence of what the Nobel Peace Prize represents,” wrote Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.

“As an international human rights lawyer, he has tirelessly advocated for political prisoners and dissidents worldwide, including (Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Andrei Sakharov, (anti-apartheid activist and former South African president) Nelson Mandela, and Natan Sharansky. This unyielding commitment to human rights and supporting political prisoners continues to this day, often at great personal risk,” he added, referring to recent threats against Cotler’s life by Iran. Cotler has been receiving security protection since he was notified in November 2023 of “an imminent and lethal threat of an assassination within 48 hours,” he told the Post in December.

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Browder was an investment manager in Russia whose associate, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested after unearthing state corruption and died in prison shortly afterward. Browder successfully lobbied U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, sanctioning Russian human rights abusers, and wrote a best-selling book, Red Notice, about his experience.

Although Cotler was previously nominated for the prize in 2008, 2016 and 2019, Cotler views this time as “a reflection of the cases and causes that I’ve had the the privilege to be engaged in, in particular defending political prisoners, those who put their lives on the line in the pursuit of justice and peace, in the defence of freedom and the protection of human rights.”

Cotler, who is also an emeritus professor of law at McGill University, spent much of a brief phone call with a National Post reporter highlighting the accomplishments of his supporters, rather than himself, pointing to figures such as Kara-Murza, Sharansky and Browder as “worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Kara-Murza is a senior fellow at Cotler’s institute and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for articles written from his prison cell in Siberia criticizing the invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kara-Murza was released in a prisoner swap in September 2024.

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According to a press release, Cotler’s nomination was officially submitted in Oslo, Norway, home of the Nobel Prize, by Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli political science professor and president of NGO Monitor, a watchdog group based in Jerusalem.

Steinberg’s letter highlighted Cotler’s contributions in Canada as a member of Parliament and attorney general. He “was central in promoting gender equality, implementing policies for local aboriginals and minorities, and initiating legislation on human trafficking,” Steinberg wrote.

Cotler represented the Montreal riding of Mount Royal and served in the Liberal government of Paul Martin in the early 2000s before leaving politics in 2014. In 2013, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau gave his seat at Mandela’s memorial service in Johannesberg, South Africa, to Cotler.

“Irwin Cotler has been a friend and mentor of mine since I was in my twenties and is one of our greatest living Canadians,” current Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather, who succeeded Cotler, told the Post in a statement. “Even today, at 84 years old, he works nonstop to make the world a better place and to defend human rights.”

The deadline to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize was Jan. 31, and the prestigious award includes a nearly $1.5-million prize. The 2024 winner was the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, for its efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.

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