{"id":870,"date":"2016-01-16T22:25:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T22:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=870"},"modified":"2016-01-16T22:25:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T22:25:19","slug":"release-of-iranian-americans-welcomed-time-to-release-all-political-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Release of Iranian Americans Welcomed, Time to Release All Political Prisoners\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Release of Iranian Americans Welcomed, Time to Release All Political Prisoners
\nSteps Towards Reconciliation with the West Are Good but Iran Needs National Reconciliation As Well<\/p>\n

January 16, 2016\u2014The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomes the long-overdue release today of four Iranian Americans, including Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was arrested in Tehran and imprisoned for the past 18 months in a bogus and politicized prosecution.
\n\u201cIf this release signals Iran\u2019s desire for international reconciliation, so too it must move forward with national reconciliation,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, \u201cand that means the release of the many political prisoners behind bars in Iran.\u201d
\nIn announcing the release, the Tehran Prosecutor stated that the swap was \u201cin the national interest.\u201d
\n\u201cNational reconciliation is just as much in the \u2018national interest\u2019,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cMany in Iran have long called for national reconciliation through the release of political prisoners, Green Movement leaders, and those behind bars since the peaceful protests that followed the disputed 2009 election in Iran.\u201d
\nThe Campaign calls for the release of such prisoners, including physicist Omid Kokabee, women\u2019s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat, journalist Issa Saharkhiz, rights activist Narges Mohammadi, human rights lawyers Abdolfattah Soltani and Mohammad Seifzadeh, Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard, and the many others whose ordeal is not yet over.
\n\u201cIranian political prisoners who are imprisoned on similarly baseless charges and do not hold a foreign passport do not get the same attention,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cThis is a continuing travesty of justice,\u201d he added.
\nIranian media also\u00a0reported\u00a0that seven Iranians who were held in the United States for violating sanctions have been released by the US: Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afqahi, Arash Ghahreman, Touraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh, and Ali Sabounchi.
\nOfficial Iranian news agencies have confirmed the names of the three other Iranian-American dual citizens who were released along with Rezaian: Saeed Abedini, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, and Nosratollah Khosravi.
\nIran also released the American student Matthew Trevithick, whose name had originally been withheld because his family had not wanted to publicize his arrest.
\nOther dual and foreign nationals, however, remain in prison in Iran. They include: Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American arrested in September 2015, Kamal Foroughi, the 76-year-old Iranian-British national held since 2013, and the Lebanese national Nazar Zaka who lived in the US and was arrested while attending a conference in Tehran in September 2015.<\/p>\n

Follow the\u00a0Campaign on Facebook and Twitter
\nFor the latest human rights developments in Iran visit the Campaign\u2019s website
\nFor interviews, contact:
\nHadi Ghaemi at +1-917-669-5996, hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Release of Iranian Americans Welcomed, Time to Release All Political Prisoners Steps Towards Reconciliation with the West Are Good but Iran Needs National Reconciliation As Well<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","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=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}