|
Iran: U.S. Citizen Detained For 'Threatening National Security'
(AKI) - Haleh Esfandiari, 67, one of the leading US authorities on Iran, has been formally charged with "threatening national security" by Iranian authorities who ordered her arrest last week. Esfandiari, whose husband is Shaul Bakhash, a well known journalist also of Iranian descent, is detained at Tehran's Evin prison. She is the third woman with double Iranian-American citizenship to be detained in Iran after journalist Parinaz Azima and an as yet unidentified woman.The Washington-based think tank Woodrow Wilson Centre for which Esfandiari works has said that the academic had been repeatedly questioned by intelligence officials. Esfandiari was visiting Tehran to see her 93-year-old mother. Many analysts in Iran believe the three women - who were all reportedly visiting Iran for family reasons - are being held in retaliation against the arrest last December by US forces in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, in Kurdistan, of five Iranians whom Tehran claims are diplomats. The five are reportedly detained in Baghded on charges they were in Iraq to support Shiite insurgents. Posted by: Fred 2007-05-16 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=188463 |