American-born Grad Student Facing National Security Charges in Iran Freed on $200,000 Bail

TEHRAN, IRAN / LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- Iranian authorities have released an American-born graduate student on bail after holding her in prison for nearly a month, an Amnesty International spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Graduate student Esha Momeni was arrested last month in Iran and jailed after an alleged traffic violation, according to a CNN report.

Momeni, 28, had been working on a project on the women's movement in Iran when she was arrested October 15 for an alleged traffic violation, according to California State University-Northridge and Change For Equality, an Iranian women's movement.

She had been held in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, Change For Equality said, as reported by CNN.

"We're really happy she's been released on bail," Elise Auerbach of Amnesty International said Tuesday. She said she learned of Momeni's release Monday through Amnesty's researchers in London, England, and from Momeni's family and friends.

CNN reported that Melissa Wall, a journalism professor at the university and an academic adviser to Momeni, confirmed the young woman's release in an e-mail.

Wall said they were waiting to see what will "happen next in terms of charges or conditions or sentencing." The university planned a rally and vigil calling for Momeni's return to California, she said. The event had been planned before Momeni's release.

Auerbach, the Iran specialist for Amnesty International USA, said she did not know the exact bail amount, only that Momeni's parents had handed over the deed to their home in Iran in return for their daughter's release.

"This is a real problem for her family because the state of their home is in doubt," Auerbach said, adding that if the Iranian government determines Momeni has violated the bail conditions, it can take her family's home.

Auerbach said Momeni has not been charged, "but there is some indication that they're planning on charging her."

CNN reported that Tehran's deputy general prosecutor, Hasan Hadad, has "deliberately leaked" to the state-run media his intentions to charge Momeni with propaganda against the state, Auerbach said. The Iranian judiciary has not commented on Momeni's release.

"A lot of people have faced that charge," Auerbach said. "It's kind of a vague, loosely worded charge that's kind of convenient. They can use it against whomever they want basically."

Auerbach said Momeni is not the only woman involved with Change for Equality who has been jailed recently; at least three women who worked with the group are being detained, she said.

Ronak Safarzadeh was arrested in October 2007 and charged with enmity with God, a charge akin to treason, and is being held in Sanandaj Prison; Hana Abdi, 21, recently was sentenced to 18 months at Sanandaj for gathering and colluding to commit a crime against national security; and Zeynab Beyezidi, 26, was sentenced in August to four years at Mahabad Central Prison for belonging to an illegal group, the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, Auerbach said.

The CNN report said that as of last Tuesday morning, the Iranian government had not returned Momeni's passport and travel papers, Auerbach stated, adding that "there is a pattern that after people are released from detention they are still kept in Iran."

Among the examples, Auerbach said, are Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian-American scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, and Mehrnoushe Solouki, a French-Iranian journalism student at the University of Quebec.

Esfandiari, 67, was arrested in 2007 while visiting her ailing mother in Iran. She was charged with harming national security and held for 105 days in Evin Prison. She was released August 21, 2007, after her mother posted $330,000 bail, but did not leave Iran until September 2, 2007.

Solouki was arrested in February 2007 and accused of "trying to make a propaganda film," according to Reporters Without Borders. She was released from Evin Prison the following month after her parents' house was offered as bail, but Solouki was not allowed to leave Iran until January, the group reported.

CNN reported that Momeni's father, Gholamreza Momeni, initially condemned his daughter's arrest, saying that even if she confessed to a crime, "anything my daughter may say in solitary confinement is worthless," according to www.roozonline.com, a news Web site run by exiled Iranian journalists.

CNN said the father gave a different account to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency last week, however, and said he was angry that his daughter had engaged in "illegal activities."

"I got so angry that I and her mother decided not visit her," he told IRNA on Friday. "I deny all that has been attributed to me by Web sites and believe them to be the personal interpretations of the reporters."

He added, "As an Iranian, I love my country and do not wish any harm to the Islamic republic."

Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said it was not clear under what circumstances Momeni's father talked to IRNA, but the remarks seem "very suspect."

"It really doesn't make any sense for him to make a verdict on his daughter's guilt," Ghaemi said Saturday, the day after the IRNA report was published.

Since Momeni's arrest became public, Amnesty International, other human rights organizations and her university have called for her immediate release, the CNN report said.

"We have concern for this young person because, like many young people, she is a dreamer, she's a thinker, she's a researcher," university Provost Harry Hellenbrand said last month.

According to the CNN report, the Los Angeles-born graduate student had been filming footage for a project on the women's rights movement, and interviewing volunteers for the One Million Signature campaign, launched in 2006 by Change for Equality.

The campaign seeks to collect signatures on a petition demanding that Iran rewrite its constitution to recognize men and women as equal.

According to the CSU-Northridge newspaper, the Daily Sundial, fellow graduate student Peyman Malaz said Momeni was "determined to better the lives of Iranian citizens."

Nayereh Tohidi, chairwoman of the school's gender and women's studies department, told the paper she, too, was involved in the campaign and had advised Momeni on her work.

"She has not been a part of any political parties, any clandestine movements," Tohidi said. "She has done nothing wrong."

Ghaemi said he believes Tehran wants to stifle the women's rights movement, and Momeni's arrest was meant to intimidate like-minded scholars or activists.

"We see here detention as a method of pressuring that movement on a broader scale," he said. "The government would very much like to quiet these women."

A Nov.11 Los Angeles Times report by Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, says Esha Momeni was arrested last month while working on a master's thesis about women's rights. She still faces charges of "acting against national security," which could bring a lengthy prison term.

The LA Times reports the Cal State Northridge graduate student arrested in Iran last month was released on $200,000 bail Monday, according to her father, Reza Momeni.

Esha Momeni is a dual U.S. and Iranian citizen who was visiting Iran to research a master's thesis, may not leave the country and must still stand before a political tribunal to face charges of "acting against national security" and "propagating against the system," said her father.

In a brief telephone interview, Momeni said his daughter had lost about 15 pounds but otherwise appeared to be in good health. He said he had to put up the deed to his family's Tehran apartment as collateral to win his Los Angeles-born daughter's release.

"I hope she will go back to L.A. soon," he said. "But for now, the authorities told us she is forbidden to go out. Tomorrow, we will be in court, and they will tell us what the next step will be."

The LA Times report said Esha Momeni moved to Iran with her family at a young age but returned to the United States to study after she divorced in 2005.

She traveled to Iran about 10 weeks ago to videotape interviews with women's rights activists as part of a master's project. She was focusing on members of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, a loosely organized group that advocates better rights for Iranian women.

The LA Times said she was arrested and locked up in a political ward inside Tehran's Evin prison Oct. 15 after what at first appeared to be a routine traffic stop. Instead of issuing a ticket, however, police escorted her to her parents' home, where she was staying, searched the flat and seized her computer before taking her away.

News of the arrest spread abroad. Her classmates at Cal State Northridge launched a website, http://for-esha.blogspot.com , calling for her release. Italy's ambassador to Iran last week lodged a formal complaint about her detention, Italy's official ANSA news agency reported.

On Friday, her father was quoted by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying he disapproved of his daughter's activities.

"I had no knowledge about the illegal activities of my daughter," he said. "But now I have realized that her work was illegal."

He also denied reports that he had been barred from seeing her, saying that he and his wife "did not want to visit her" in prison "because of our anger in connection to her activities."

According to a report on the website www.Tehrantimes.com Esha's father said Esha must still stand before a political tribunal for acting against national security and will therefore not be allowed to leave the country.

Momeni’s attorney Mohammad-Ali Dadkhah said earlier that she came to Iran to conduct research on the status of women in Iran.

Esha’s father said on Saturday that he did not know about the nature of his daughter’s activities, stressing that he does not approve of her conduct.

“I was unaware of my daughter’s activities but now I have realized that they were illegal,” he said in an interview with IRNA.

Meanwhile, Voice of America (VOA), citing AP and Reuters, stated that relatives say they put up the deed to the family's house to cover Momeni's $200,000 bail.

VOA said Iranian authorities pressed security charges against Momeni after seizing her computer.

VOA also said Iranian authorities arrested four people with dual Iranian and U.S. citizenship last year on security-related charges. All eventually were freed after paying bail.

It added that Iranian women's rights activists say women are systematically discriminated against in areas such as marriage and divorce law, inheritance and legal status. Iranian authorities deny allegations of rights violations and say they are enforcing Islamic law.

Several women's rights activists have been detained in recent months. They had taken part in a campaign to collect one million Iranian signatures demanding an end to legalized discrimination against women, VOA said.

The Jerusalem Post, citing an Associated Press (AP) report, said Momeni's lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah explained that Esha Momeni planned to leave for the US as soon as possible.

He said that there was no travel ban, though she could still go to trial for the unnamed "security charges."

The AP reported that other charges were added after authorities confiscated her computer and video footage of her research interviews. She was placed in the Evin Prison, the Tehran facility notorious for holding political prisoners.

Born in Los Angeles, Esha Momeni earned a bachelor's degree in graphic design at Azad University in Tehran in 2002. She enrolled at California State University in 2006.

Momeni's father came to Los Angeles in 1977 to pursue a civil engineering degree at Cal State. He later returned to Iran with his family.

A report by the IranVNC (Visual News Corp) said security agents arrested Momeni for a traffic violation last month and transferred her to Evin prison after conducting a search of her parents’ house and confiscating Momeni’s computer, video recordings and text books, the website of Iran’s women’s association reports.

Momeni had traveled to Iran to document the women’s movement and had interviewed members of Iran’s One Million Signature Campaign for gender equality, the campaign’s website reports.

Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, quoted Momeni’s father as saying last week that he was unaware of his daughter’s “illegal” activities in Iran and urging judicial authorities to be lenient.

In California, a weblog started by Momeni’s university cohorts carried the news of her release but said: “This weblog will continue its work until the return of Esha to California and to her studies at CSUN (Cal State University Northridge).”

Iran has over the past year arrested a number of activists affiliated with the One Million Signatures Campaign for gender equality.

"I was unaware of my daughter's activities but now I know that they were illegal," Esha Momeni's father, Gholam-Reza Momeni said in an interview with IRNA.

"When I realized that my daughter was involved in illegal activities, I and my wife refused to meet with her because we were angry about what she had done," he added.

Following the arrest of the graduate student, some media outlets reported that her parents had been prevented from seeing her.

Momeni's father, however, rejected the remarks that had been attributed to him and said the reports were the fruit of journalists' personal take and active imagination.

"A reporter contacted me and asked whether my daughter was detained. I only said yes, but my short response was transformed into several pages," he explained.

The dedicated website http://for-esha.blogspot.com/ says CSUN Graduate students at CSUN hosted a candlelight vigil in hopes of their classmate's return.

The event was attended by students and professors from CSUN, and by Esha's friends including the members of One Million Signatures Campaign-California.

At the beginning of the event, Esha's close friend and her sister sincerely thanked everyone who advocated for Esha's release everywhere.

Classmates and Professors talked about Esha and expressed their hopes that she can return to CSUN to complete her education and graduate with the rest of her class. Some expressed concern at the fact that Esha's release was on bail (a deed to her family's home).

Esha's adviser, Professor Melissa Wall said at the vigil: "I am very proud of all of my graduate students who have worked so hard to let the world know about Esha Momeni's situation and who stand here tonight asking that Esha be allowed to return to Cal State Northridge to finish her degree with her classmates.

"I am especially proud of Esha -- for the courage she has shown in order to share with us a seemingly simple message: Iranian women are more complex and a lot tougher than the images we so often see of them."

She added: "We are not here tonight to offer Esha or any other Iranian woman our pity -- but we offer our understanding and our solidarity and to share our hope that Esha be allowed to rejoin us soon to continue her academic work."

At California State University, Northridge, professors and classmates of Momeni, celebrated the news of the grad student's release.

"These three weeks have probably been some of the most difficult weeks I have ever experienced," said professor Melissa Wall, adviser for the communications graduate program at CSUN.

"But these weren't wasted weeks. We have all learned a lot about ourselves and about the obstacles that exist in communication between these two very different countries and cultures. These were the exact issues Esha's work focused on and even though this has all been very difficult, maybe eventually something good will come out of this."

** This report was compiled from information gleaned from an Internet search of other news sources. It has been modified for use on this news service. Every effort has been made to reflect the accuracy of the original reporting.

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Travel Warning
United States Department of State
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Washington, DC 20520

This information is current as of today, Sun Nov 16 2008 01:35:38 GMT-0800 (PST).

IRAN

September 15, 2008

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