IRAN: LAWYERS SEEK REVERSAL IN SECOND "U.S. SPY" CASE
Omid Memarian
Inter Press Service
May 26 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, May 26 (IPS) – In a case that human rights activists
say echoes that of recently released journalist Roxana Saberi, the
Iranian government has imprisoned a woman employed by a U.S.-based
non-profit organisation working to improve child and maternal health
in the country, alleging that she acted as a spy for the United States.
Silva Haratounian, an Iranian citizen of Armenian descent, held a
modest position with the International Research & Exchanges Board
(IREX), which focuses on international education, academic research,
professional training and technical assistance.
Her work and life were interrupted on Jun. 26, 2008 when she was
detained by Iranian authorities and charged with participating in
an effort to overthrow the Iranian government through a "velvet
revolution." On Jan. 19, 2009, she was sentenced to three years
in jail.
"Haratounian is completely innocent and has not committed any
crime," Abdolfattah Soltani, a human rights lawyer in Tehran who is
representing Haratounian, told IPS.
"She told me she had lost 11 kilogrammes in one month," he
said. "Though she has not been physically hurt, she has had to endure
a lot of psychological hardship."
On May 11, a three-judge panel announced that the revolutionary court
that convicted Roxana Saberi, an American Iranian journalist who was
held in Tehran’s Evin prison for more than three months, had charged
her under the wrong section of Iran’s criminal code.
Saberi was initially sentenced to eight years in prison after being
convicted of "cooperating with a hostile state", but the appeals court
overturned that verdict on the grounds that Iran and the United States
cannot be described as states that are hostile to each other in the
legal sense of being at war.
Haratounian was sentenced under the same section of Iran’s penal code,
making her family and lawyers hopeful that an appeals court could
overturn the verdict.
"I believe suspects such as Roxana Saberi and Silva Haratounian
and people in other similar cases have not committed any crimes,
rather, these are cases which have been reviewed with a very harsh,
personal, and unique approach of certain judges and some intelligence
operatives based on their interpretation of the laws," said Soltani
in a telephone interview.
Soltani said that many defendants are perfectly willing to be tried
in a public court, "So why don’t they do it? If [prosecutors] have
evidence, why would they cut the suspects off from the outside world
during early interrogation stages, preventing their contact with their
attorneys? Why don’t they let them contact their families? Why are
they isolated and forced to accept whatever the interrogators want
them to accept?"
In December 2007, Haratounian responded to a newspaper advertisement
and was hired as an administrative assistant, working for IREX on a
maternal and child health education exchange programme.
A few days after Saberi’s release earlier this month, Haratounian’s
mother, Nvart Moradkhan, told IPS by telephone, "This is good news
for Silva, right? The two cases are similar, and we should hear some
positive news about Silva soon."
Haratounian’s ailing mother is the only person who can visit her
weekly. "Her health is deteriorating," said Moradkhan. "She has lost
so much weight. Her hair is all gray, she looks very old. She is very
depressed. She has a lot of health problems, [including an] ulcer,
and had asked the attorney to ask for doctors."
"Silva Haratounian is an innocent victim of the Intelligence Ministry’s
obsession with finding American spies," Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of
the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based
group, told IPS.
"She was simply an administrator for an American NGO doing a project
in Iran and the Iranian government was aware of its activities. She
was unfairly prosecuted based on the same indictment that Roxana
Saberi received an eight-year sentence for originally, and then the
appeals court threw out that indictment."
"Standards of justice need to be consistent in Iran and if Saberi’s
appeals court ruled the U.S. is not an ‘enemy government’ then
Haratounian should be released too because her conviction is based
on the same article of the law," Ghaemi said.
Paige Alexander, vice president of IREX, told IPS that the government
has thus far failed to respond to letter sent by the organisation
appealing for Haratounian’s release.
"We have coordinated with a number of different lawyers on this case
and we have been working tirelessly to bring attention to Silva’s
plight through the formulation of the website,
press outreach and other public and private religious and diplomatic
efforts," Alexander said.
"Having had IREX attend meetings in Iran at the government’s request
before, we believed that this modest programme was a proper vehicle
to start reaching out to Iran in a non-controversial way," she noted.
"IREX never imagined that anyone could construe this programme to
be inconsistent with any interest of the Iranian government and
since the purpose of the programme was to have Iranian and American
participants enhance their knowledge of best practices in this field,
IREX believed this was completely consistent with Iran’s national
interest," she said.
In July 2008, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had declared
that "contacts between Iranians and the American people will be a
useful step for better understanding of the two nations," according
to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
"IREX attempted to model the MCHEEP programme on other programmes
which we believed had been sanctioned by the Iranian government,"
explained Alexander.
Haratounian’s attorneys are now in the last phase of her appeal.
"I am hopeful Silva Haratounian’s three-year jail term will be reversed
in a trial with educated and experienced judges," Soltani said.