American Marine Veteran Held in Iran Assails ‘Serial Hostage-Taking’
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Version 0 of 1. Relatives of a Marine veteran incarcerated in Iran for more than three and a half years sent a letter to congressional leaders on Tuesday, dictated by him over the phone from prison, denouncing what he called Iran’s “serial hostage-taking and mistreatment” and demanding tougher pressure on the Iranian authorities to release him and two other American prisoners as part of the nuclear negotiations. The letter from the veteran, Amir Hekmati, of Flint, Mich., was one of the boldest steps he has risked from Evin Prison in Tehran to help call attention to his own plight and that of other American prisoners in Iran, who like Mr. Hekmati are of Iranian descent and are considered Iranian citizens by the Tehran authorities. Mr. Hekmati, 31, has previously written to the president, foreign minister and supreme leader of Iran and President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, among others. He has undertaken a hunger strike and declared his wish to renounce Iranian citizenship in a bid to get the consular access afforded to foreign prisoners. On Tuesday, for the first time, his family in the United States released an audiotape of Mr. Hekmati, who dictated a letter from inside the prison that the family also sent in printed form to the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives from both parties. “While I am thankful that the State Department and the Obama administration has called for my release and that of my fellow Americans, there has been no serious response to this blatant and ongoing mistreatment of Americans by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and they continue on with impunity,” Mr. Hekmati said. He asserted that the Intelligence Ministry had demanded the release of Iranians held in the United States as a condition for freeing him. It is an assertion he has made previously and has urged the United States to reject. “I assume the same demands are being made for other U.S. captives,” he said in the letter. American officials have repeatedly said there have been no discussions of prisoner exchanges with Iran. Recounting his own arrest in August 2011 as well as the incarcerations of the two others held in Iran — Saeed Abedini, 34, of Boise, Idaho, a Christian pastor imprisoned since 2013, and Jason Rezaian, 39, of Marin, Calif., The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, imprisoned since last July — Mr. Hekmati described the arrests as part of what he called an Iranian bargaining strategy to extract concessions from the United States in the talks on Iran’s nuclear activities. Those negotiations, between Iran and a group of six world powers including the United States, face a June 30 deadline for reaching a final agreement. Mr. Hekmati said the nuclear negotiations could not be divorced from the arrests, as well as the unexplained disappearance of a fourth American in Iran, Robert Levinson. Nonetheless, Mr. Hekmati said in the letter, “Secretary Kerry sits politely with the Iranians, shaking hands and offering large economic concessions to save them from economic meltdown.” Officials at the State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Mr. Hekmati’s letter. Mr. Hekmati, whose Marine service included tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, was arrested while visiting relatives in Iran for the first time. He was held incommunicado for months and kept in solitary confinement, and he has said that he has been tortured. He was sentenced to death for espionage, but the verdict was overturned and he was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for collaborating with a hostile country, meaning the United States. His appeal of that conviction has languished for months. “As a war veteran who defended our nation in its time of need, I ask that you also work to defend my dignity and that of my fellow Americans by putting in place serious consequences for this serial hostage-taking and mistreatment of Americans by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence for clearly illegal purposes,” Mr. Hekmati said in the letter. In recent letters to his family, Mr. Hekmati has said that the penal authorities have moved him to a ward for hardened criminals, that he subsists on a prison diet of rice and lentils and that he suffers recurrent lung infections. But recently he has been able to telephone his parents in Flint from prison once a day for 5 or 10 minutes, his sister, Sarah Hekmati, said in a telephone interview. She acknowledged that Mr. Hekmati faced possible reprisals from Evin officials for his letters and protests. “He’s trying to let us advocate for him,” she said. “We fear the consequences,” she added. “Basically, every time he has done this he has said, ‘If you don’t hear from me, it’s safe to assume that I’ve been put in solitary.’ We always hold our breath.” |