22/08/2007: Detained Iranian-American academic Dr. Haleh Esfandiari was suddenly released from a notorious Tehran prison Tuesday after spending months behind bars on charges of endangering Iranian national security — allegations her family vehemently denies. However it remains unclear if Haleh Esfandiari, 67, will be allowed to leave the country.

Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, had been jailed in Tehran’s Evin prison since early May after enduring months of intense interrogations. She was released after her elderly mother used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail, family said.

“I’m very happy. It was unexpected. I thank all those who made efforts to make it possible for me to go home,” Esfandiari told Iranian television. The footage showed her walking out of the prison and meeting family members in a car on a nearby street.

Mohammad Shadabi, an official at the Tehran prosecutor’s office, said Esfandiari had been released on 3 billion rials bail (about US$333,000), but he could not say whether she would be allowed to leave Iran.

Esfandiari’s daughter, Haleh Bakhash, said she believed the terms of Esfandiari’s release prevent her from leaving the country, but she was not under house arrest or any form of detention. She said she spoke to her mother briefly by telephone after her release.

Former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, who heads the Wilson Center, said he was unsure what prompted Esfandiari’s release but added he had recently received a written response from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after sending him a letter appealing for her freedom. “I cannot speak to that (why she was released) with certainty, because I do not know what goes on inside the Iranian government. I think an important factor was my letter to the supreme leader a few weeks ago,” Hamilton told reporters by phone. He said the two-paragraph response, written in English, was unsigned and didn’t mention Esfandiari by name. But the response indicated that Khamenei, who has the ultimate authority in Iran, had given instructions to deal with the issue, he said. Hamilton also said he recently met with Iran’s U.N. representative, who told him Esfandiari’s release was imminent.

Esfandiari was detained Dec. 30 after three masked men holding knives threatened to kill her on her way to Tehran’s airport to fly back to the U.S., the Wilson Center has said. The men took her U.S. and Iranian passports, making her unable to leave the country, the center said. For several weeks, she was interrogated by authorities for up to eight hours a day about the activities of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, the Washington-based foundation said. Iran confirmed in mid-May that it was detaining Esfandiari and charged her later that month. Since then, her only contact with her family has been short phone calls to her mother in which she indicated she was under immense stress and was having trouble receiving medication for her health conditions, Hamilton said.

Iran also has charged three other Iranian-Americans for security-related offenses: Parnaz Azima, a journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Farda; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. Shakeri and Tajbakhsh are in prison; Azima is free but barred from leaving Iran.

The detentions have become another point of contention between the U.S. and Iran. Washington also accuses Iran of arming Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq and seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies those claims, and blames Washington for Iraq’s instability.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry had accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a “soft revolution” in Iran, along the lines of the revolutions that ended communist rule in eastern Europe. Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, and the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan institution established by Congress in 1968, deny the allegations.

Earlier this month, Iranian authorities said they concluded their investigations into Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh. Both had appeared in a video broadcast on Iranian public television in July in which Esfandiari said a network of foreign activists was trying to destabilize Iran and bring about “essential” social change.

Both the Wilson Center and the New York-based Open Society Institute have criticized the Iranian government for the broadcast and dismissed the statements as “coerced.”

Esfandiari told Iranian state-run TV after her release that her jailers were polite, and she had recently been allowed to read newspapers and watch television. “Their treatment was remarkably good. I had a big room. It was a bright room with window. They had made it possible for me to go out for a walk,” she said.

Hamilton said he did not believe the charges against her had been dismissed. He also said there were “many interlocutors — official and nonofficial — on Haleh’s behalf,” but he did not identify them, though he added that as far as he knew the Bush administration didn’t play a direct role in contacting the Iranians about Esfandiari.

At the couple’s home in Potomac, Maryland, Bakhash said he hopes his wife’s release means she will be allowed to return to the United States. “I feel extremely good. It has been a very anxious several months,” he said. Her daughter, Haleh Bakhash, who lives in Washington, said Esfandiari was happy to be at her mother’s home and hear her daughter’s voice. “I am guardedly optimistic that within a couple of weeks she will be able to join us,” she said.

21/08/07

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 BACKGROUND

On May 8, security forces took Dr. Haleh Esfiandiari to Evin Prison, though she had not been formally charged with any crime. Evin Prison is notorious for its harsh treatment of political prisoners. In 2003, Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi was killed during her interrogation in the prison.

On 12^th May 2007, the state-controlled newspaper Kayhan accused her of spying for the US and Israel and of trying to incite a democratic revolution in the country.

On 29^th May 2007, Mr. Ali Reza Jamshidi, Iran’s judiciary spokesman, said that Dr. Haleh Esfandiari was “formally charged” with “endangering national security” through propaganda against the system and “espionage for foreigners”. Under Iran’s law, the charge could carry the death sentence.

Mr. Jamshidi further stated that the same charges had also been lodged against two other Iranian-Americans, Mr. Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant, and journalist Ms. Parnaz Azima. No trial date was announced and Mr. Jamshidi said the Intelligence Ministry was still investigating their cases. Mr. Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American social scientist as well as a consultant working for the New York-based Open Society Institute, was arrested at his home in Tehran by agents of the Ministry of Information and brought to section 209 of Evin prison around 11^th May 2007. He seems to have been detained in incommunicado detention without access to legal counsel. According to the Institute, Mr. Tajbakhsh had been helping “to facilitate public health, humanitarian assistance and urban planning projects that [they] undertook openly and with the knowledge of the Iranian government”.

Ms. Parnaz Azima, a reporter for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, the Persian-language service run jointly by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Voice of America, has been prohibited from leaving Iran since her passport was seized in January 2007. At the time of writing, she was not imprisoned but was unable to leave the country.

Finally, another dual citizen, Mr. Ali Shakeri, was also believed to have been banned from leaving Iran.

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 BACKGROUND II

Haleh Esfiandiari and other Iranian-American citizens unlawfully arrested and detained

29/05/2007: Incommunicado detention of and judicial proceedings against several Iranian-American citizens including Dr. Haleh Esfiandiari, director of the Middle East programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC. Dr. Esfiandiari was arrested in Tehran on 8^th May 2007 after being summoned for questioning by Ministry of Intelligence officials and was taken to section 209 of Evin prison, where she was allowed one call to inform her relatives that she had been jailed. Dr. Esfandiari is also a well-known advocate of dialogue between the US and Iranian governments.

Dr. Esfandiari, a scholar with both American and Iranian citizenship, had been in Iran visiting her 93-year-old mother when she was prevented from leaving on 30^th December 2006 and both her passports were taken. She was interrogated repeatedly before her arrest.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

The authorities in Iran are obliged to conform in all circumstances with article 9.1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a State party, which states that “Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law”, as well as with the standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners.

Please write to the authorities in Iran urging them to:

i. Guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of Dr. Haleh Esfiandiari, Mr. Kian Tajbakhsh, Mr. Ali Shakeri and Ms. Parnaz Azima;

ii. Order their immediate release in the absence of valid charges, or, if such charges exist, bring them before an impartial, independent, and fair judicial court and guarantee their procedural rights at all times;

iii. Order a thorough and impartial investigation into these events, in order to identify all those responsible for the illegal arrests, bring them to trial and apply the civil penal and/or administrative sanctions as provided by law;

iv. Ensure the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout the country in accordance with national laws and international humanitarian law and human rights standards.

You may also consult the Free Haleh website for more information and to sign their online petition demanding the release of Haleh Esfiandiari.

Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei

The Office of the Supreme Leader

Palestine Avenue

Azerbaijan Intersection

Tehran, Iran

Email: info leader.ir, istiftaa wilayah.org, and webmaster wilayah.org

Fax: +98 21 649-5880/ 21 774-2228

Salutation: Your Excellency

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi

Head of the Judiciary

Ministry of Justice

Park-e Shahr

Tehran, Iran

Email: Irjpr iranjudiciary.com and info dadgostary-tehran.ir

Fax: +98 21 879 6671 / +98 21 3 311 6567 / + 98 21 3390 4986

Salutation: Your Excellency

Dr. M. Javad Zarif

Ambassador to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations

622 Third Ave.

New York, NY 10017

United States

Email: jzarif un.int

Fax: +1-212-867-7086

Salutation: Your Excellency

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Presidency

Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Salutation: His Excellency

Fax: + 98 21 649-5880

E-mail: dr-ahmadinejad president.ir

Minister of Intelligence

Mr. Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie

Ministry of Intelligence

Second Negarestan Street, Pasdaran Avenue

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Salutation: Your Excellency

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Mr. Manuchehr Motaki

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Sheikh Abdolmajid Keshk-e Mesri Ave.

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Salutation: Your Excellency

Fax: + 98 21 390 1999

Email: matbuat mfa.gov

Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran

28 Chemin du Petit-Saconnex

1209 Geneva, Switzerland

Fax: +41 22 733 02 03

Email: mission.iran ties.itu.int

Ambassador Mr. Ahani

Embassy of Iran in Brussels

15a avenue Franklin Roosevelt

1050 Brussels, Belgium

Fax: + 32 2 762 39 15

Email: iran-embassy yahoo.com and secretariat iranembassy.be

Please also write to the embassies of Iran in your respective country.

BACKGROUND

On May 8, security forces took Dr. Haleh Esfiandiari to Evin Prison, though she has not been formally charged with any crime. Evin Prison is notorious for its harsh treatment of political prisoners. In 2003, Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi was killed during her interrogation in the prison.

On 12^th May 2007, the state-controlled newspaper Kayhan accused her of spying for the US and Israel and of trying to incite a democratic revolution in the country.

On 29^th May 2007, Mr. Ali Reza Jamshidi, Iran’s judiciary spokesman, said that Dr. Haleh Esfandiari was “formally charged” with “endangering national security” through propaganda against the system and “espionage for foreigners”. Under Iran’s law, the charge could carry the death sentence.

Mr. Jamshidi further stated that the same charges had also been lodged against two other Iranian-Americans, Mr. Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant, and journalist Ms. Parnaz Azima. No trial date was announced and Mr. Jamshidi said the Intelligence Ministry was still investigating their cases. Mr. Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American social scientist as well as a consultant working for the New York-based Open Society Institute, was arrested at his home in Tehran by agents of the Ministry of Information and brought to section 209 of Evin prison around 11^th May 2007. He seems to have been detained in incommunicado detention without access to legal counsel. According to the Institute, Mr. Tajbakhsh had been helping “to facilitate public health, humanitarian assistance and urban planning projects that [they] undertook openly and with the knowledge of the Iranian government”.

Ms. Parnaz Azima, a reporter for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, the Persian-language service run jointly by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Voice of America, has been prohibited from leaving Iran since her passport was seized in January 2007. At the time of writing, she was not imprisoned but was unable to leave the country.

Finally, another dual citizen, Mr. Ali Shakeri, is also believed to have been banned from leaving Iran. No further information could be obtained on his situation as of the time of issuing this appeal.

Information collected from the The International Secretariat of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Free Haleh campaign, and WLUML networkers.