The wife of California businessman Ali Shakeri yesterday appealed to the Iranian government for information on her husband, who has been detained since May 8, as the State Department charged that Tehran is engaged in a “disturbing pattern” of harassment against dual U.S.-Iranian citizens.
Shakeri, a peace activist, is at least the fourth American citizen detained by Iran in recent weeks, the State Department confirmed, after previously withholding comment at the request of his family. The Iranian government has denied holding him, but the other three detainees have been charged with spying.
In a telephone interview, Zohreh Shakeri said her husband has called her three times from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison and asked her not to comment publicly on his situation. A family member in Tehran saw her husband at the prison two weeks ago and also was asked not to say anything. But after 24 days of saying nothing publicly, Shakeri said she decided to break her silence.
“I need to know where my husband is. I’m devastated. I don’t know what to do,” she said. She said she has not received a call from him since May 17.
It is common for Iran to tell detainees to urge family members not to say anything about their confinement, according to human rights groups.
Shakeri, who graduated from the University of Texas in the 1970s, had returned to Iran to visit his mother, who was ill and who died while he was there, his wife said. He was due to return May 8 but was detained at the airport and his bags were taken off the plane, according to friends and family.
The State Department yesterday called Iran’s charges of espionage against detained Americans “ridiculous.”
Shakeri “has no standing with the U.S. government,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. “He is not a U.S. government official. He is not operating or acting on behalf of the U.S. government. He is a private citizen.”
The department issued a travel warning yesterday against U.S. citizens visiting Iran.
Zohreh Shakeri’s public appeal came on the same day that a coalition of international human rights activists called on Iran to immediately release two detained Iranian-Americans, clarify the status of Shakeri and lift the travel ban on a journalist who is a dual national.
The coalition includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders and Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights lawyer and the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
“These measures appear to be an attempt by Iran’s security authorities to sow fear into the wider community of journalists, writers, scholars and activists,” they said in a joint statement.
Shakeri, a mortgage banker and resident of Irvine, Calif., may be the victim of an “enforced disappearance,” the statement said.
Shakeri is a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California at Irvine. On the organization’s Web site, he is described as “an Iranian-American activist who advocates Democracy in Iran and peace in the world.” Shakeri was involved in bringing Ebadi to speak at the university, his wife said.
Also jailed in Iran are scholar Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh. The Iranian government also has refused to allow Parnaz Azima, a correspondent for U.S.-funded Radio Farda, to leave the country since January. All three were charged Tuesday with espionage and endangering Iran’s national security.
Former FBI agent Robert Levinson has been missing in Iran since he flew to Kish Island on March 8 on business. Tehran has either denied knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts or not responded to formal messages on his behalf, according to the State Department.
At a news conference yesterday, Wilson center Director Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said the think tank has contacted a dozen governments, including some with close ties to Iran, to ask them to intervene on Esfandiari’s behalf.
Hamilton called on the Bush administration to make the detention issue part of the new U.S.-Iran dialogue that was launched Monday.
The State Department said yesterday that the bilateral talks are not likely to include hostage issues. “I expect that a very specific and limited forum focused on Iraq is likely to stay focused on Iraq,” Casey told reporters.
Javier Solana, the European Union‘s foreign policy chief, said yesterday that he had brought up Esfandiari in his talks on Iran’s nuclear program with Iranian national security adviser Ali Larijani in Madrid.
