Haleh Esfandiari Reunites With Family

September 7, 2007

UPDATE: Freed by Iran, scholar reunited with her family Washington Post, 7 September 2007

Haleh Esfandiari free to leave Iran, joins family in Vienna

(5 September 2007) Early Monday morning, Haleh Esfandiari was finally able to leave Iran. She reunited with her husband and sister in Vienna, where she plans to rest before returning to the United States.

Parnaz Azima, a US-Iranian journalist, was also freed to leave Iran this week after authorities returned her passport.

Haleh Esfandiari released on bail

(22 August 2007) The Nobel Women’s Initiative welcomes the release of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari from Evin Prison after over three months in solitary confinement. Despite her release, she has not been reissued a passport and remains unable to leave Iran. Though no date has been set for trial, the charges against her have not been dropped. The basis of her imprisonment has been an unfounded accusation of endangering national security.

Associated Press reports that, Esfandiari’s lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said her client has the legal right to leave the country but authorities seized her passport in January and have not returned it or issued a new one. I’m certain that my client is innocent and she must be acquitted of the charges,’ Ebadi said. She vowed to prove her client’s innocence in court.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative urges the government of Iran to drop all charges and allow for Dr. Esfandiari’s immediate return to the United States.

See our previous call for her release below.

NWI calls for the release of Haleh Esfandiari

(17 July 2007) The Nobel Women’s Initiative calls on the Government of Iran to immediately release Haleh Esfandiari from Evin Prison, to drop all charges against her, and to free her to return to her home and family.

Haleh Esfandiari, a dual Iranian-American national, the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, and a renowned scholar in her own right, was arrested by the Iranian authorities on May 8 and has since been held in solitary confinement at Evin Prison. In violation of the Iranian Constitution, Iranian law and Iran’s international commitments, Dr. Esfandiari has been held in solitary confinement, subjected to tens of hours of interrogation without benefit of counsel, and denied family visits, contact with her lawyer or effective legal representation. Dr. Esfandiari’s lawyer, our sister Nobel Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, has not been allowed to visit her. (Read a letter from Shirin Ebadi to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at the bottom of this page).

Dr. Esfandiari is 67 and a grandmother. There is good reason to be concerned about the state of her mental and physical health and her treatment by the prison and security authorities.

Dr. Esfandiari’s harassment began even earlier than her arrest on May 8. Dr. Esfandiari went to Tehran in December 2006 to visit her 93 year old mother. On December 30, on her way to the airport to fly back to her home in the United States, she was stopped by three masked, knife-wielding men who took away all her belongings, including her American and Iranian passports.

Prevented from leaving the country, she was subjected to over 50 hours of interrogation by officials of the Ministry of Intelligence, subjected to intimidation and threatened with graver consequences if she did not cooperate with the authorities. Such interrogation methods continued after her unjustified incarceration in Evin Prison.

Iranian authorities apparently wish to charge her with actions against national security. Such charges are entirely without foundation. In her work at the Wilson Center, Dr. Esfandiari has strived to provide a forum for exchanges among scholars, researchers and journalists representing a wide range of views on Middle Eastern issues. She has been a tireless promoter of and believer in dialogue between Iran and the international community. She has devoted a lifetime to the advancement of women’s rights in the Middle East.

Dr. Esfandiari is a published author and editor. Before taking up her present position at the Wilson Center, Dr. Esfandiari for many years taught Persian language and literature at Princeton University. In a letter to the Iranian authorities calling for her release, her former students have noted that it was Dr. Esfandiari who instilled in them a love for the Persian language and Persian literature. It is astonishing that Iranian authorities should subject a woman who has been devoted to Iran all her life to unfair treatment, incarceration and unfounded charges.

Human rights organizations, leading associations of Middle Eastern scholars, university professors, and scientists, international women’s organizations, and leading newspapers all over the world have called for an end to Dr. Esfandiari’s unjustified imprisonment.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative calls on the Iranian government to adhere to its own high principles of justice and fairness. It is time end Dr. Esfandiari’s imprisonment, to restore her freedom, and to allow her to return home.

ENDS