Human Rights Watch today reported the disappearance of another U.S. citizen believed to have been detained during a visit to Iran.
Ali Shakeri, a businessman from Irvine, Calif., who has lived in the United States since he graduated from University of Texas in the 1970s, was due to leave Tehran to return to the United States in early May after a visit to his ailing mother, who died while he was in Tehran. But he has not been heard from since he left for the airport, according to Human Rights Watch and two Iranian friends who expected him in London en route home.
Shakeri, who is in his late 50s, would be the fifth dual American-Iranian national to have been imprisoned, detained or prevented from leaving Iran in recent weeks. “We have every confidence that Shakeri is in detention,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch.
At a press conference today before, President Bush called Iran’s recent detentions of U.S. citizens “unacceptable.”
“Obviously, to the extent that these people are picking up innocent Americans, it’s unacceptable,” Bush said. “And we’ve made it very clear to the Iranian government that the detention of good, decent American souls who are there to, you know, be beneficial citizens, is not acceptable behavior.”
In interviews, two close Iranian friends in London confirmed that Shakeri had not been heard from since early May. Calls to his home and office in Irvine were not returned. Paula Garb, co-director of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California at Irvine, said the center had expected him back about three weeks ago. Shakeri is a founding member of the center’s advisory board.
Shakeri made one call from Tehran to his family to say he had been detained, according to a friend of Shakeri in London who asked not to be identified. However, Shakeri requested that the situation not be publicized and instead asked his family to say he had gone to France, the friend said. Family in Tehran who went to the airport to try to find out what happened to him were told his luggage had been pulled from the plane’s cargo and his ticket had been cancelled, Ghaemi said.
Iran has not publicly commented on Shakeri’s situation. “It’s a very scary situation,” Ghaemi said. “We haven’t seen this kind of kidnapping for a decade. If the intelligence ministry can get away with this, we have taken many steps backwards.”
Only three of the four other dual nationals who have been imprisoned, detained or prevented from leaving Iran have been publicly identified. They include Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Parnaz Azima of U.S.-funded Radio Farda, and social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh. The fourth person has requested not to be identified by The Washington Post.
A sixth American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, has been missing in Iran since he disappeared on Kish Island in early March. The United States has written five letters asking for information on his whereabouts and circumstances but has not received any information.
In a statement, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Esfandiari’s imprisonment May 8 was “offensive and indefensible. Accusations against Ms. Esfandiari of conspiring to foment a revolution in Iran are spurious and ridiculous.”
U.S. and Iranian diplomats are due to meet in Baghdad Monday for their first bilateral talks in years. The focus is supposed to be limited to the future of Iraq.
