Iran’s Weekly Wire

You’re listening to Iran’s Weekly Wire; I’m Roland Elliott Brown.

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An Iranian-American in his late 20s visits Iran for the first time. He spends a couple of happy weeks in Tehran. He goes to parties and gets to know his extended family.

Then he just disappears.

His relatives are stunned. They go looking for him and report back to his family in the US.

Everyone was frightened but didn't know what happened. They went back to the apartment that he was getting ready at. He was at a cousin's apartment. They saw that the door had been broken open and it was obvious that there was a scuffle, and he was forcibly removed.

That’s the voice of Sarah Hekmati. She’s describing what happened to her younger brother Amir on August 29th, 2011.  

We called every prison in Iran and were told that his name was not on their lists. And so for three months all we knew was that he was abducted and we had no idea where he was.

It wasn’t until December 2011 that Amir turned up.  He appeared on Iranian state television, and confessed to being a CIA spy.

Forced, televised confessions are routine in Iran. When someone appears in one, it usually means that he or she has fallen into the hands of Iran’s security agencies.  These forced confessions are sometimes a prelude to very severe sentences.

In January 2012, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Amir to death for quote  - “cooperating with an enemy state,” and “membership in the CIA.”

The judges also added the arcane Islamic charges of “enmity with God” and “corruption on earth.”

Two months later, Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence, but imposed a 10-year prison sentence instead. This time the charge was “cooperating with hostile governments.”  

Amir has always denied the charges.

He begged them to show a shred of evidence that is being used against him so that he could at least testify and explain where they are getting these accusations from, and he has not been given that right.

For about a year and a half following his abduction, Amir’s family couldn’t even speak to him.

The courts kept his family in the dark the whole time. I asked Sarah if any Iranian official had explained why they thought Amir was a spy.

No, that's the hardest part for us, There's always been a lack of transparency. We've never had any formal documents presented to us as a family, nor has Amir. I wish I knew what value Amir has to them. I guess I could wrap my head around it better if he was a high-profile US government official, or someone who had some sort of standing or leverage here in the US.

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So what kind of man is Amir?  And why did Iranian authorities portray him as a threat?

Sarah and Amir’s parents, Ali and Behnaz, like so many Iranian-Americans, left Iran in 1979, just after the Ayatollah Khomeini launched his Islamic Revolution.

Their children, Sarah, Amir, and Amir’s twin sister Leila, never got to see Iran growing up. I asked Sarah what Iran meant to them.

My family always had a strong connection with Iran, and really wanted to be able to go back. The only thing that really held them back financially was that my Dad was a student at the time and he had three young children, and so in order to be able to travel there with the whole family, it was going to be very costly, and in addition there was the Iran-Iraq War, which really put us at risk for being able to go We always had a desire to go. In fact my Mom really made it a priority to teach us Farsi and wanted us to understand the culture and the traditions and really embraced that. She didn't want us just to identify as Americans. She wanted us to appreciate our Iranian culture as well.

Amir developed a strong interest in other languages and cultures, too. He wanted to travel and study Arabic.

In August 2001, he decided that the best way to fund and pursue his studies was to join the US Marines. The Marines’ Defence Language Institute in California trained him as a linguist.

In 2003, the year the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, Amir was deployed to Iraq.

He served mainly in the central city of Ramadi. I asked Sarah what Amir felt about his time in Iraq.  

I think he thought he played an important role in engaging in better dialogue between the US troops and the Iraqi people. He himself coming from a Middle Eastern background, he felt that he could be a person that would build a bridge and help dispel stereotypes. He helped the troops that were there to be more culturally sensitive to the etiquette, for example, when engaging with an elderly person, for example, how to approach them, that you stand up, you greet them. To not shake a woman's hand, for example.

Anyone unsympathetic to Amir’s case might argue that from Iran’s point of view, he was a foreign soldier involved in a war that made Iran’s leaders extremely nervous.  But as Sarah explained to me, it’s not a legal argument.

Many people may not know this, but when Amir applied for his visa and permission to go he actually was transparent. He wanted to make sure he covered all his bases There is in their own laws nothing against someone of Iranian nationality to serve in a foreign military.

Nevertheless, Amir’s family was worried about him going to Iran.  But the ties of family are strong and Amir’s grandmother’s time was getting shorter.

My grandmother had come a few times when we were children--my Mom's Mom--to visit us, so we had a strong connection with her, but we never knew what it was like to have extended family and relatives, so holidays in the US were very much just our immediate family. It was always something like longing in his mind, like he really felt it would be so nice to to be able to meet more than just my grandmother. My grandmother was very connected to him, but the last time he had seen he was 12 or 14 year old, so she was getting older, it was harder for her to be able to travel here to the US and he hasn't seen her in all these years, so he really just felt a pull to be able to go.

Amir left the Marines in 2005.  When he decided to go to Iran in 2011, he disclosed his history to the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, DC.  They told him not to worry.

They helped him to get his documents in order and in August 2011, he flew to Tehran.

He was so excited, he got to meet uncles and aunts and cousins, and really was just thrilled to be able to be there and he would call home frequently, and say, "This is so neat! I see people that resemble our family, and I'm seeing our relatives that I've never met before and now I know what it feels like to have extended family like all of our friends in the states that had uncles and grandparents, and cousins. So he was really excited. He got to see a lot of places in Tehran because that's where my family is from, and really just enjoy that experience.

That’s when security officials kidnapped him, without offering his family a word of explanation.

We as a family frantic because we called Iranian Interests Section, we called the Foreign Ministry in Iran, and said you know, he's missing, what could be the problem, he went with all the appropriate paperwork, and he had all his documents. Nobody could give a straight answer.

It turns out he was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison for 17 months. Evin is a huge prison complex that looms over Tehran, and it’s where most political prisoners are held.

Then, about a year and a half ago, the Hekmatis began receiving short phone calls from him. He could only speak for five or ten minutes at a time.

And he was able to call for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, earlier this week.

I asked Sarah what kind of condition Amir is in now.

It's not good. He's with hardened criminals, the sanitary conditions are not good. They have fleas and lice and bedbugs and people are constantly sick. During these past winter months, the prison didn't have enough resources to maintain the heat, so, if you can imagine, Evin prison is in the mountains, and he's in there, basically, bundled up, trying to tough it out through the winter. The food rationing, he said it's basically rice and lentils, which isn't sufficient when he's sick to try and get better.

He has also reported that his captors tortured him. He says they flogged the soles of his feet, and applied tasers to his kidneys.

The effect of his imprisonment on his family has been devastating.

It's one thing to grasp the fact that a brother who was born and raised in the US, always passionate about learning about his Iranian heritage, went there and was kidnapped and held hostage, and being treated the way he was, the excruciating amount of torture and mistreatment that he endured, we can't even wrap our minds around that. And then to top it off, my father, in this past year and a half, has suffered brain cancer and two strokes, which have left him very handicapped, to the point that now my Mom has to use most of her energy to give him round-the-clock care, which takes away from her ability to be able to push forward with the Iranian officials in Iran, and get answers for when her son can come home.

Getting American prisoners home from Iran is never easy, but Amir has a lot of people on his case.

In Iran, his family has hired a lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, who is pushing for his release.

He said that Amir can be eligible for Amnesty. When a prisoner in Iran has served one third of their sentence, that they should be eligible for a review of their case. Amir has served one third of his 10-year sentence at this point. It's been three and a half years. Another avenue is a pardon, so he’s pushing through the supreme leader to grant him a pardon. More on the humanitarian grounds, given the condition of my father's health. Another option is to appeal to the Supreme Court, and ask for a retrial to review his case.

He is getting support from the US government too.

The Hekmatis’ Congressman, Dan Kildee, constantly draws attention to his case. The State Department assures the family that Secretary of State John Kerry raises the case on the sidelines of the nuclear talks currently going on in Switzerland.

But so far, they haven’t had a tangible response from Iran.

Amir himself has written letters to Iranian officials explaining his situation. In December, he wrote to Sadegh Larijani, the Head of Iran’s Judiciary, and Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence.

Amir said that prison officials had admitted to him that his case was political. He says they told him his case was being delayed because of the nuclear negotiations.

Here’s Sarah on the nuclear angle:

Now, we heard back in september of 2014 that Amir's case was in review, and it was sent to the supreme court and assigned a judge, and it was going to move forward. We were really happy to hear that. We thought this was a sign of progress, and then ironically, I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but when the November talks were extended between the US and Iran for their nuclear negotiations, everything fell apart and Amir's case was no longer in the supreme court, and we never heard about movement on an appeal since then.

And then last January, he wrote to President Hassan Rouhani. In that letter, he said he believed he was being held so Iran could swap him for Iranian prisoners held by the US.

I spoke to Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran based in New York. He doesn’t think Hekmati’s case depends on a nuclear deal, but he backs up the prisoner exchange story.

I asked him if Iran has said who it wants released.

No, Iranian authorities have been very opaque about that, but quite regularly when the issue of Iranian-Americans has come up who are in jail in Iran, they made it clear that they wish to wish to release them only after certain prisoners here have been released, but they have never said who is their intended target in American jails.

But while the Iranian authorities have been silent, Amir’s family have been receiving mysterious phone calls from individuals in Iran. In his letter to President Rouhani Amir wrote the following.

For the past three years, my family has been receiving emails and phone calls from individuals within Iran proposing prisoner exchanges, even going as far as asking my family to lobby publicly for the release of these individuals.

This is not the normal way a state goes about asking for its citizens to be released.  I asked Hadi Ghaemi what this could all mean?  Who is responsible for Amir’s case?

Obviously the judiciary is ultimately responsible because the judges and the courts system have prosecuted and imprisoned him, but it does appear in his case that the revolutionary guards intelligence unit is the main culprit, and they are the ones calling the shots. In general my sense is that there is a deep security state, and its policy is mostly determined by the Revolutionary Guards commanders, who are behind these detentions, but they are never transparently on the front of these issues, and the judiciary is the one that carries the prosecutions and imprisonment.

What Ghaemi means by Deep Security State is that while Iran has ministries and officials like other states, but they don’t hold power.  The people who hold power in Iran are the security services.  

The revolution guard is big, 125,000 people strong, and it reports directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.  The Commander of the Revolutionary Guards is directly appointed by the Supreme Leader, as is the head of the Guards’ intelligence unit.  

In 2009, the Intelligence Unit was made responsible for investigating journalists and activists.  Now, there is also an Intelligence Ministry in Iran, but it sometimes seems like a bit of a sidekick to the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Unit.

He is a victim of machinations inside Iran's intelligence and security forces. He unfortunately happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time it appears to me that he is really a hostage in Iran, and those people responsible for holding him are interested in exchanging him for some Iranian prisoners in the United States.

So why doesn’t the Iranian government just come out with it, and say what they want?  Well maybe it’s a mistake to think of the government as a whole and better to think of competing fiefdoms and interests.

I would distinguish the government of Rouhani from the intelligence and security forces which are fairly autonomous from the executive power, but if you go back as far as 2004, 2005, We've had several Iranian-Americans who have been detained and accused of spying charges, but usually they are meant to serve a political purpose inside the country, either to torpedo discussions between the Iranian government and the United States, or to bring up the issue of the Iranian prisoners they want to be released, and that has made Iranian-Americans, unfortunately, a target of these unfair prosecutions which really have other motivations behind them.

So what should the US government do?  According to Ghaemi, they’re not really doing enough.

I would like to see the US government be much more proactive on these cases. There are several of them beside Amir, and maybe because of the delicate negotiations going on we haven't seen enough resolve on their part even though they have stated that they bring it up on the side lines of negotiations.

If these negotiations reach a conclusion soon, the US government should really put much more capital into advocating for their release, it should be protesting much louder.

For Nowruz last week, President Obama made a video address Iranians, and expressed hope for the New Year, and for nuclear negotiations.

He didn’t mention Amir in the video, but he did issue a written statement calling for Amir’s release, and  the release of three other Americans held in Iran.

This does suggest that right now, for Obama, everything is subordinate to the nuclear question.

Still, Sarah is hopeful:

We're hoping that we see some positive momentum with the outreach that President Obama recently did to the Iranian officials. I know right now its the holiday in Iran and there's not going to be a lot of movement until people get back into the groove of things, but we want to remain optimistic, we don't want to lose hope that there's an opportunity for things to happen and for negotiations to take place.

That’s all for Iran’s Weekly Wire. To find out more about the Hekmatis’ campaign for Amir’s release, go to FreeAmir.org, or follow his case on Twitter @FreeAmirHekmati.

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