Jailed Iranian-American Prisoner Struggles with Health Issues

Five years have passed since Hassan Rouhani's government invited several dual and foreign nationals to Iran to participate in conferences. Several of those who took up the invitation were forced to endure the most appalling treatment, including interrogation, torture, accusations, and imprisonment.

Iranian-American citizen Siamak Namazi was among them. He was arrested on October 13, 2015 and has spent the last five years in prison without a single day out on temporary release, which is standard for most prisoners serving long sentences. As Namazi marked the beginning of his sixth year in detention, his lawyer reported that his client can no longer walk without great difficulty, a condition he has lived with for a year now. He also says Namazi intends to lodge a lawsuit against an official he holds responsible for his poor health.

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Siamak Namazi returned to Iran in autumn 2015 following an invitation sent on behalf of several prominent figures representing the government of Hassan Rouhani. According to his lawyer, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, Namazi arrived in Iran together with a number of other professionals and business people. But soon after his arrival, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Intelligence Service summoned and arrested him, confiscated his passport, and banned him from leaving the country. He was charged with "communicating with hostile states" and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Prior to this, Namazi had traveled to and from Iran several times.

In February 2016, Siamak’s father Baqer Namazi, who served as governor of Khuzestan before the revolution, returned to Iran to visit his son in prison. He was also arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Marking Siamak Namazi’s fifth year in prison, Namazi’s lawyer, who took on his case two years ago, posted on Twitter: "Siamak Namazi has started his sixth year of imprisonment. During five years in prison, he was not allowed to take a single day off, though he has the right to take three days off every month. Despite the need for out-of-prison treatment, my efforts have so far been ineffective. At his request, I will soon set in motion the prosecution of an official."

In an interview with IranWire, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi explained that he was not prepared to reveal the identity of the official Namazi planned to sue until the complaint was filed.

"Siamak Namazi was invited by one of the presidents’ deputies to come to Iran as a young business leader along with a number of other young people. He has repeatedly urged the deputy [to the judiciary] to clarify that he had returned to Iran on their invitation so that it will be clear there was no security issue. But this person has not come forward during these five years. Siamak has asked me to file a complaint against this person."

Namazi requested the leave he is entitled to in a letter addressed to the head of the judiciary on January 31, 2020, but this request was ignored. He stated that judicial authorities had refused his right to temporary leave, or furlough, even though he had paid an unconventional amount of money as bail."This leave is necessary to repair my poor mental and physical condition and to take care of my 84-year-old sick father, who is in a dangerous condition, as well for the relief of my family,” he wrote. He also noted that the brother of one of the country’s top officials was granted leave just a few hours after being detained.

In February, a source told IranWire that Namazi was suffering from depression.

Siamak Namazi's former lawyer, Mehrdad Ghorbani Sarabi, died recently at Trita Hospital in Tehran after contracting Covid-19. The lawyer’s mother also died from the disease around the same time.

IranWire interviewed Ghorbani Sarabi in February 2020. At that time, the lawyer said there is unwritten consensus among judicial officials to oppose Siamak Namazi's request for leave without giving a reason. 

Siamak’s father Baqer Namazi remained in prison until autumn 2018. Like his son, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of "having links with hostile states." During his time in prison, Iranian state media accused Baqer Namazi of being involved in the fire at the Cinema Rex in Abadan on the eve of the 1979 revolution.

He also underwent heart surgery during his time in prison, and it was on health grounds that he was released, though he is not allowed to leave Iran and is essentially under house arrest.

Aghasi told IranWire that Baqer Namazi was handed down an adjusted sentence due to his illness and age: "He was fined 36 million tomans [$US1,200] instead of having to serve the rest of his sentence since he was unable to tolerate prison. Although he was released, he is still not allowed to leave the country."

 

Prisoner Exchange?

In the past, the Islamic Republic has agreed to prisoner exchanges deals for dual national political prisoners. For this reason, human rights advocates and the families of political prisoners often refer to them as hostages, and point out Iranian leaders’ attempts to use them as leverage for political gain. Siamak's brother, Babak Namazi, described his brother's imprisonment as "hostage-taking" in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on October 13.

As the sixth year of Siamak Namazi's imprisonment began, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted about Namazi's case, indicating that the Islamic Republic wants to exchange Siamak Namazi for a prisoner associated with the Iranian government in the United States.

"Today marks five years since Iran arrested Siamak Namazi, an innocent man, simply for being a US citizen," Pompeo wrote on Twitter. "Siamak, his father Baquer, and Morad Tahbaz shouldn't spend another day detained. Iran needs to end this immoral practice and let them come home now."

Prior to this, in addition to human rights organizations' repeated demands for Siamak Namazi’s release, 160 current and former United Nations and UNICEF staff, prominent academic figures, and several US senators called for his release from prison.

In June, Abbas Mousavi, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said: ”If there is a possibility of a prisoner exchange, we are ready to release the rest of those imprisoned and return them to the United States.” The comments followed the exchange of Majid Taheri, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison for violating US sanctions against Iran, for Michael White, a US citizen who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in Iran. Apparently the exchange was a result of a "private plaintiff” being involved in White’s case.

"I hope that in the coming days we will see the release of all Iranians trapped in different parts of the world and in the United States," Hossein Jaberi Ansari, the Deputy Foreign Minister for Parliamentary and Iranian Affairs, told reporters at Imam Khomeini Airport.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has repeatedly referred to the exchange of prisoners between the United States and Iran. In spring 2019, he told a question-and-answer session with the Asian Association of New York: "Iran considers the allegations against Iranian prisoners in the United States to be false, and the United States says the same about its prisoners in Iran. So let's end this discussion. I am ready and I have the authority to do so.” This hinted that discussions or negotiations could be taking place, though it is unclear whether his statement that he has the “authority” to order prisoners’ releases is accurate.

"Unfortunately, we do not know who may be considered for this exchange," Mohammad Aghasi told IranWire. "All information we have we’ve got online. No dialog has taken place formally or legally by official authorities. But maybe there are behind-the-scenes talks."

 

Cases of Other Political Prisoners

Discussions are said to be currently ongoing about the case of Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Charitable Foundation, and Fariba Adelkhah, an Iranian-French academic researcher. Both are on temporary release.

The exchange of Roland Marshall, a university professor, with Jalal Ruholah-Nejad between Iran and France is another recent example. Although it is said there are other dual and foreign national prisoners in Iran, lawyers handling their cases have chosen not to release their names or details of their cases, opting for reliance on intergovernmental negotiations in the hopes that Iran will release them via prison exchanges or other negotiations.

As lawyer Mohammad Hossein Aghasi pointed out, some of these prisoners came to Iran at the invitation of Hassan Rouhani's government. Among them is Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese-American citizen, who was arrested in late 2015 after being invited to speak at a conference by Shahindokht Molaverdi, who was the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs at the time. Zakka was interrogated and imprisoned and faced torture while incarcerated. He was released in 2019.

A recent documentary produced by IranWire shows Nizar Zakka having a telephone conversation with Molaverdi, in which he talks about the interrogations and imprisonment he had suffered as a result of her invitation. He repeatedly asked her why she had not followed up on his case. Molaverdi failed to answer, but did say she had not had the authority to decide on his case. 

Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American dual national, and co-founder and member of the board of directors of the Parsian Heritage Wildlife Institute, was arrested and imprisoned on January 24, 2018 along with eight environmental activists on charges of "espionage." Two years later, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Revolutionary Court on charges of "collaborating with the United States as a hostile state" and ordered to pay “the amounts he had received from the US government."

So now Siamak Namazi enters his sixth year as a prisoner. He also came to Iran at the invitation of Hassan Rouhani's government, but now, after years of imprisonment without leave, he has even lost the ability to walk.

In another letter to the head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raeesi, on July 12, 2020, Namazi demanded his rights again. In the letter, he described how he had been locked in a room for a year before his trial, where he was not even allowed to have a pen and paper. He was only allowed to meet with his lawyer a half an hour before the trial, and he was prohibited from consulting with him during the trial. Namazi stated how the judge had accused him of networking for three decades to "overthrow" the Islamic Republic, a claim that, if true, means he would have been plotting against the regime since he was 14 years old.

Siamak’s brother Babak Namazi reiterated in his recent article for the Washington Post that, for the last five years, his brother has been tortured, interrogated, and held in solitary confinement. He described the psychological pressure on the family as a nightmare. "Every letter or call we receive from him could be the last message,” he said.