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Concerns Over Forced Confession Cloud Iranian-Canadian Academic's Release August 31, 2006 Ottawa Citizen Joel Kom OTTAWA -- An Iranian-Canadian man held in a Tehran prison for four months without charges was released Wednesday, but news of his freedom was tempered by reports of a supposed confession made to national media shortly after his release. That confession, friends and family believed, was likely part of the conditions of Ramin Jahanbegloo's release from the notorious Evin prison for political prisoners. While they were relieved to hear the former University of Toronto professor would be reunited with his wife and young daughter at...

Jahanbegloo’s ‘Confessions’ are Ready for TV Maryam Dastgeer 16 Aug 2006 It is reported that Ramin Jahanbegloo’s ‘confessions about his so called role in the velvet revolution of Iran are going to be soon broadcast on national television in Iran. Earlier, the High Cultural Revolution Council had announced similar accusations about Jahanbegloo's connection with the velvet revolution. Keyhan and Resalat newspapers too had announced that a film on such confessions was forthcoming. While international groups have expressed their serious concern about the health, physical and psychological conditions of this Iranian thinker, the publication of the news about his imminent TV...

Iran Urged to Release Philosopher July 03, 2006 The Guardian Ewen MacAskill and Simon Tisdall in Tehran International pressure is growing on Iran to release a prominent philosopher and writer, Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was arrested two months ago on unspecified charges. His incarceration in the notorious Evin prison has left Tehran's intellectual circles concerned about his fate and their own. His friends insist that he is not politically active. Although Iran has an abysmal human rights record, Mr Jahanbegloo's arrest at Mehrabad airport in Tehran has created greater interest abroad than usual because he is well known among foreign academics....

Jailed Iranian-Canadian now in hospital, friend told Thu, 04 May 2006 CBC News A friend says former University of Toronto professor Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian detained in a prison in Tehran since last week, has been transferred to a hospital. Shahram Kholdi told CBC News on Thursday his contacts in Iran alerted him that Jahanbegloo is in hospital. He is not sure whether the hospital is within the Evin prison, where the writer and philosopher was being held, or is a separate institution. Kholdi, who is based in Manchester, England, said his contacts had no information about his friend's condition....

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Prominent Iranian philosopher and writer Ramin Jahanbegloo has been arrested on suspicion of espionage, newspapers said on Thursday. Iran's judiciary on Wednesday confirmed the arrest, without specifying the charges brought against Jahanbegloo, who also holds Canadian citizenship. The first high-profile intellectual arrested since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June, Jahanbegloo is being held at Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where most of Iran's jailed political dissidents are kept. Several newspapers carried reports linking the top writer's arrest to "espionage." "Jahanbegloo has been arrested ... on charges of spying," an unnamed source was quoted by the official...

Iranian author arrested in Tehran By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran A leading Canadian-Iranian intellectual, Ramin Jahanbegloo, has been arrested at the airport in Tehran. A prominent dissident cleric described Mr Jahanbegloo's arrest as "the height of lawlessness and insecurity". At a gathering to celebrate International Press Freedom Day, Mohsen Kadivar said Mr Jahanbegloo was one of Iran's philosophical journalists. The arrest has caused concern about freedom of speech as Iran comes under increasing pressure from abroad. Mr Jahanbegloo is a well-known Canadian-Iranian professor with doctorates from the Sorbonne and Harvard University. He has written and edited more than a...

In south Tehran there is a huge walled cemetery dedicated to the martyrs, the young men who died fighting in the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. This vast city of the dead, complete with its own subway station and shops, does not share Arlington National Cemetery's sublimely stoic aesthetic of identical tombstones, row upon row. In Tehran's war cemetery, each of the fallen is remembered individually with his own martyr's shrine, a sealed glass cabinet on a stand. The cabinets are filled with faded photos of men forever young, some in helmets or red bandannas, some carrying...