Conviction Islamic institutions and contexts Ruqya, shrine, and healing contexts Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada · 2017

Canada: mosque director convicted of assaulting a congregant during a 'curse removal'

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

imam and director of a mosque and Islamic centre

Organization

Masjid Al-Hidayah and Islamic Cultural Centre

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The judge's findings supply the nexus: religious authority over a vulnerable counselee, a manufactured curse, and engineered isolation.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Spiritual healing or treatment
Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2017-01-01 · conviction and sentence

British Columbia court (Judge Crawford), Canada. Saadeldin Bahr, director and imam of the Masjid Al-Hidayah, was convicted of sexually assaulting a married congregant — who was suffering depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety and had come to him for counselling — after telling her she had 'a bad curse' requiring spiritual removal and taking her to a storage room in 2013. Sentenced to three and a half years, 20 years on the sex-offender registry and a firearms prohibition; the judge found his position of power and his isolation of the victim from her family central.

Documented coercion mechanisms

religious counselling of a vulnerable congregant
claim of 'a bad curse' requiring spiritual removal
isolation from her family

Cited record

Sources

national public broadcaster verdict and sentencing report CBC News, 'Port Coquitlam imam convicted of sexual assault sentenced' (2017).: Reports the conviction, the curse pretext, and the judge's findings.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/imam-sex-assault-sentence-1.4423138 Corpus classification: national-public-broadcaster; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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