US Repeats Call For Release Of Americans Held Hostage In Iran
The United States has called on Iran to release American citizens it holds hostage, saying it is continuing to approach negotiations to secure the release of four Iranian-Americans.
The United States has called on Iran to release American citizens it holds hostage, saying it is continuing to approach negotiations to secure the release of four Iranian-Americans.
State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a press briefing on Tuesday that the US “is seeking to secure the release of four wrongfully detained US citizens with the utmost urgency, and will continue to urge Iran to do the same.”
“Iran must allow Baquer (Bagher) and Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi (Shargi), and Morad Tahbaz to return home to their loved ones,” he said, declining to comment on Bagher’s medical issues over privacy concerns.
Bagher Namazi, 85, and his son, Siamak, are both jailed by the Islamic Republic, while the elder is in need of surgery “within weeks,” his family said. According to a statement from Perseus Strategies, which represents the family, he already had health problems when he was detained in 2016, and has developed further medical issues during his six years of imprisonment.
“According to multiple neurologists, Namazi must undergo surgery within weeks to clear life-threatening blockages in his left internal carotid artery,” the statement read, adding that “At the time of his arrest, Bagher was 79 years old and already suffering from numerous health conditions... The horrific prison conditions, denial of proper care, and overall trauma of the past six and a half years have been devastating for Bagher’s physical and mental health. He developed stress induced, adult-onset epilepsy, as well as severe depression.
Government spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi said Tuesday that in the latest cabinet meeting President Ebrahim Raisi ordered all government organizations to provide maximum facilitation for the annual pilgrimage to Karbala where the main events of the annual ceremonies take place.
According to Bahadori-Jahromi, the government has improved the country’s infrastructures to facilitate pilgrimage to the religious city of Karbala including ten different airports for flights to Iraq as well as six dedicated border checkpoints, and the railway network. The first rail line from Tehran to Karbala has now been launched, he added.
The Civil Aviation Organisation has said but it has prepared 1,000 special flights to Iraq For the ceremonies.
Iran will probably end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor a large pilgrimage because both domestically and in the region the clerical regime needs to show its ideology is influential.
In 2019, The New York Times quoted an influencial Iranian media boss, Hossein Sulaimani, as saying, “Arbaeen is a display of power for Iran and a showcase of unity among Shiites in the region."
The government will also be stationing a hot air balloon in the Iraqi border area to provide free mobile Internet access as well as free Wi-Fi to pilgrims and will also grant 50 million rial loans (around $160) to heads of households going on family pilgrimage and 30 million ($100) to individual pilgrims, he said, adding that the loan can be secured by online application and there will be no need for guarantees if the applicant has a cash subsidy account.
Around 5 million Iranian pilgrims are expected to travel to Iraq during the Arbaeen ceremonies which fall on September 18 this year. If such a large number end up going, the loan alone can cost the government upwards of $500 million amid an estimated 50-percent budget deficit.
Iranian authorities deploy all religious entities and media to encourage pilgrimage to Karbala. Government organisations and the state affiliated charities as well as municipalities and city councils often allocate considerable budgets to organize the Arbaeen Walk. Some officials and clerics say the Arbaeen gathering is one of the manifestations of the Shia “soft power’.
Many government organizations, municipalities, and city councils have separately allocated special budgets for the Arbaeen ceremonies in Iraq. The City Council of Mashhad, for instance, has approved a budget of 150 billion rials ($5 million) for services in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf and will dispatch 525 city cleaners and 354 bus drivers there.
“Arbaeen was a grassroots religious occasion…but the Islamic Republic turned it into a state ceremony. holding state religious events and using public money for that purpose. It means the government is putting its hand in people’s pockets without asking for permission,” Reza Veisi, Iran International analyst tweeted Monday.
The Arbaeen ceremony which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period following Ashura -- the religious ritual for the commemoration of the third Shia Muslim Imam, Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, killed in 680 AD – is the world's largest annual gathering.
Millions of Shia Muslims gather every year to mark Arbaeen in Karbala, Iraq, where the Imam is buried. Many walk long distances, even hundreds of kilometres, to the shrine of the Imam.
There are no reliable methods for tallying the number of visitors to Iraqi holy Shia sites during Arbaeen. In 2019, before the pandemic, an estimated 15 million people from various countries attended the ceremonies.
In an open letter, signed by the sister of French citizen Benjamin Briere, the wife of Austrian Kamran Ghaderi, the wife of Swedish-Iranian doctor on death row Ahmadreza Djalali and the daughter of German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd and addressed to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, they said their loved ones “wonder whether EU officials have forgotten them and how much longer they will have to endure this ordeal.”
“We, the families of French, Swedish, German, and Austrian citizens, who have been illegally detained by the Iranian regime, are outraged that the European Union seems to be ignoring these crimes,” they added.
The families also listed legal and other mistreatments their loved one have had to endure. “These European citizens have been subjected to torture, grossly unfair trials based on fabricated charges, without access to legal counsel or proper medical care. All of them are held hostage by a dictatorial regime that does not even abide by the minimum standard of international legal and human rights.”
Briere has been detained since May 2020 and sentenced to eight years in jail on spying charges while Ghaderi has been held for almost seven years since January 2016. Djalali has been in jail for six years and is awaiting execution in Iran on charges of spying for Israel leading to the killing of nuclear scientists.
Amnesty International has accused the Islamic Republic of taking Djalali "hostage" and using him as “a pawn in a cruel political game." Sharmahd was kidnapped in Dubai and transferred to Iran in late July 2020 as Iran accused him of bombing a mosque in Shiraz 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded more than 200 others.
Iran has been accused of wrongfully detaining at least a dozen foreign and dual nationals on trumped up charges, effectively as hostages to extract concessions from Western governments. Most of them are held on disputed spying charges.
According to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), there are currently some 20 dual nationals and foreign nationals with US or European passports detained in Iran.
Borrell said on Monday he was “less confident” about efforts to restore the landmark nuclear deal, which was abandoned by former US president Donald Trump in 2018.
Earlier in the month, Iran reiterated its call for the release of its former officials imprisoned in Europe while Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, said Tehran is on the hunt for both Swedes and Belgians to exchange with them.
Foreign ministry’s spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Saturday that Assadollah Assadi, serving a 20-year sentence in Belgium over a terror attack in Paris, and former jailor Hamid Nouri, sentenced to life in prison in Sweden for his role in 1988 prison purges, should be released as their trials were illegal.
Assadi, 50, a former attaché at the Iranian embassy in Austria, was convicted of plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris on June 30, 2018. Iran says Nouri’s detention is driven by “false allegations” made by the MEK.
