{"id":770,"date":"2015-06-13T15:37:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T15:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=770"},"modified":"2015-06-13T15:37:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T15:37:46","slug":"america-letter-journalist-jailed-for-reporting-on-life-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=770","title":{"rendered":"America Letter: Journalist jailed for reporting on life in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and his Iranian wife Yeganeh Salehi in Tehran in September 2013. Rezaian, a dual Iranian-American citizen, has been been jailed since July last year on charges including espionage. Photograph: EPA\/STR<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

06.13.2015 – THE IRISH TIMES – Simon Carswell –<\/span> Today is US-born \u2018Washington Post\u2019 correspondent Jason Rezaian\u2019s 326th day in jail
\nJason Rezaian\u2019s article in the Washington Post on July 17th, 2014 was a charming colour feature about how a growing number of Iranians were embracing America\u2019s favourite pastime, baseball.<\/p>\n

He quoted the first baseman on Iran\u2019s national team, Younes Fathizadeh, and coach Mehrdad Hajian, and wrote that at the end of every practice session the players forage for the foul balls hit into the woods surrounding Tehran\u2019s only baseball diamond.
\nThis is how each practice ends, Hajian remarked. \u201cSix years ago I bought a thousand balls. I\u2019ve got about 20 left,\u201d he told Rezaian.
\nThe journalist ended his feature saying that the Iranians wanted to host American players or to send a team to the US for exhibition games.
\n\u201cThis kind of diplomacy can have a very positive impact on our work,\u201d Alireza Adib, president of Iran\u2019s Baseball Association, told him.
\nFive days after the article appeared, Rezaian (39), the Post\u2019s Tehran correspondent since 2012, and his Iranian wife Yeganeh Salehi were arrested by the Iranian authorities.
\nHe has been held ever since in Tehran\u2019s notorious Evin Prison, famous for detaining political prisoners, academics and intellectuals, and for the torture, ill treatment and neglect of inmates. His wife, a photojournalist, and the others detained with him were later released.
\nRezaian, who born in California and holds dual Iranian-American citizenship, has been held in an Iranian jail longer than any other western journalist. His brother Ali has said he is held in isolation and has lost 40 pounds.
\nRezaian\u2019s family and employer are mystified about why he was arrested in the first place. To them, he was simply doing his job, reporting on Iran for a foreign audience, chronicling how Iranians make a living, have fun and spend time with their family.
\n\u201cHe was trying to reflect that these are human beings who live there, that this society does not lend itself to caricature and shouldn\u2019t be viewed in a one- dimensional way,\u201d says Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, sitting in his office not far from the White House.<\/p>\n

Unjustly imprisoned
\nThe reporter\u2019s plight has been raised at the highest levels. In April, president Barack Obama said that Rezaian was \u201cunjustly imprisoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five days earlier, the Iranian authorities disclosed the precise charges against Rezaian for the first time since his arrest. They include accusations of \u201cespionage\u201d, \u201ccollaborating with hostile governments\u201d and \u201cpropaganda against the establishment.\u201d
\nAccording to his lawyer, the Iranians allege that Rezaian gathered information \u201cabout internal and foreign policy\u201d and provided it to \u201cindividuals with hostile intent\u201d.
\n\u201cSome of these charges read like what journalists are supposed to do,\u201d says Baron. \u201cWriting about the internal and foreign policy of Iran \u2013 isn\u2019t that what a journalist does? . . . Everything he has done has been in the normal course of being a journalist.
\n\u201cMaybe in the minds of a conspiratorialist, they can see all sorts of terrible things in that. But that is what we do and he was an accredited journalist and he had been a journalist there for quite some time.\u201d
\nLast Monday the second hearing in Rezaian\u2019s trial took place, again behind closed doors. Iran\u2019s quasi-official Tasnim news agency reported that Rezaian defended himself and that part of his defence was in English, which was translated into Farsi by a translator.<\/p>\n

Closed trial
\nAccording to Baron, the reporter was not allowed to pick his own lawyer and the one he chose from a list designated by the court had only an hour and a half with him prior to the start of his trial, which is closed to outsiders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a system of justice; it is a system of injustice,\u201d Baron says.
\nThe trial comes at a sensitive time in Iranian-American relations, as six of the world\u2019s leading powers seek to conclude an agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme before a June 30th deadline.
\nRezaian is being held by the Revolutionary Guard and being tried in the Islamic Revolutionary Courts. It has been speculated that he is a victim of an internal struggle within Iran, that the Revolutionary Guard might be prosecuting Rezaian to embarrass Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and undermine the nuclear talks.
\nUS secretary of state John Kerry is said to have continuously raised Rezaian\u2019s case with the Iranians on the fringes of the negotiations, though his release is not being made a condition of the nuclear deal.
\nToday marks Rezaian\u2019s 326th day in captivity, held for trying to report beyond the common stereotype of what outsiders perceive life to be like in the Islamic Republic.
\n\u201cHis own treatment,\u201d says Baron, \u201c has reinforced the worst possible image of Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

06.13.2015 – THE IRISH TIMES – Simon Carswell – Today is US-born \u2018Washington Post\u2019 correspondent Jason Rezaian\u2019s 326th day in jail Jason Rezaian\u2019s article in the Washington Post on July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-jason-rezaian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}