Iran's "Illegal" Jailing of an American Scholar

A prominent Iranian-American policy scholar who has been imprisoned in Iran is innocent of any wrongdoing and should be released immediately, her Iranian attorney said Thursday afternoon during an unusual visit to Washington.

The attorney is Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who herself was once jailed by Iranian authorities for her advocacy work.

Speaking at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ebadi called the arrest of Haleh Esfandiari last week "a warning for Iranians" active in foreign policy work and "an effort to create further restrictions" on nongovernmental exchanges between Iran and the United States.

Esfandiari, director of Middle East programs at Washington's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has been jailed without being charged after some four months of de facto house arrest. She was visiting her mother in Tehran.

The case is being followed closely internationally, with some analysts interpreting Esfandiari's plight as a response by hard-line Iranian security agencies to U.S. political and military pressure on Iran.

Ebadi, an author and cofounder of a Tehran group called the Human Rights Defense Center, called the arrest and interrogations of Esfandiari "illegal. ...These are all a violation of the law." She added, "My client is innocent and should be released."

--Thomas Omestad