Kafila

There is terrible news about Kian Tajbakhsh, Iranian scholar with many friends in India. We are horrified to learn from sources familiar with his case that he  was

“unexpectedly hauled before a separate IRGC court over the weekend [November 21-22],  evidently because a hardline SEPAH (IRGC military intelligence) group is determined to pin the post-election unrest on a foreign scapegoat and is demanding Kian’s execution. The Deputy Chief of Staff of SEPAH supposedly identified ‘new evidence’ among Kian’s emails showing that he is a spy and the IRGC is supposedly lodging new charges of espionage against Kian that carry the death penalty and is transferring him to another prison.”

Kian, an Iranian-American who had moved back to live in Teheran some years after obtaining a doctorate from Columbia University,  was arrested in July 2009 in the wake of the pro-democracy uprising in Iran. On August 1st, he was among the numerous political prisoners dragged out for a staged mass trial, where he was accused of collaborating with outside governments to orchestrate the post-election protests that have rocked Iran. At that point he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He had been previously arrested in 2007 by the regime on grounds of being an American agent, and imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison for four months. On his release he resigned from his job in an American research foundation and focused on his own academic writing, avoiding any activity that might be frowned upon by the Ahmadinejad regime. He had not in fact participated in the pro-democracy protests in any way.

Kian Tajbakhsh is a scholar and Iranian patriot who chose to continue living in Iran even after his previous arrest, because of his love for his land, its culture and its people.

Those of us in India who have been consistently anti-imperialist and critical of the US, and who respect Iran’s anti-US imperialist position, have been deeply disturbed by the Iranian regime’s crushing of the pro-democracy protests and its attempts to characterize these massive uprisings as fomented by the US.  It’s tragically ironic that the US should be dubbed as “pro-democracy” by the Iranian regime!

Scholars at Risk wrote:

“The suddenness of Dr. Tajbakhsh’s arrest and the lack of any clear basis for his detention and conviction raise grave concerns about the ability of internationally recognized scholars and intellectuals to safely visit Iran…

Scholars at Risk therefore joins with the many national and international academic associations, scholarly societies, human rights organizations and individual scholars that respectfully urge the Iranian government to examine the circumstances of Dr. Tajbakhsh’s arrest and conviction.”

His friends here in Delhi, including myself, who know him from his vists here since the 1990s, who know his wife Bahar and baby daughter Hasti, who know him as a scholar and academic, are shocked, bewildered, and feel utterly helpless.

Siddharth Varadarajan who interviewed  Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki for The Hindu on his recent visit to Delhi, before we had this most recent piece of appalling information, said to him:

“Among well-wishers of Iran in India, there is concern about the recent secret trial of the Iranian scholar, Kian Tajbakhsh, for his alleged involvement in the post-election protests. Now he has been sentenced to 12-15 years. We hope his case can be reviewed because he is a scholar and not someone involved in subversion.”

Mottaki replied:

“All judicial verdicts can be reviewed and the opportunity of appeal is there for him. I am not aware of the details of his case. But our great effort is to see that those entering court can use all their rights, including appeal or using the capacity and potentiality of pardon.”

We can only hope that the Iranian regime will take seriously the plea of well-wishers of Iran and friends of Kian in India that Kian Tajbakhsh be released.

Visit the Free Kian 2009 website for more information.