An 85-year-old American-Iranian, Baquer Namazi, who was stranded after being detained in Iran, was allowed to leave the country while his son Siamak was released from custody, the UN Secretary-General told the case’s lawyers on Saturday.
“These are critical first steps, but we will not stop until the Namazis can all return to the United States and their long nightmare is finally over,” the men’s lawyer, Jared Genser, said in a press release.
For his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres said he was “grateful that our former colleague Baquer allowed Namazi to leave Iran to seek medical treatment in Iran after (his) appeals to the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Ebrahim Raïsi). Abroad”.
Baquer Namazi, a former Unicef official, was arrested in February 2016 while traveling to Iran to free his son Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American businessman, who had been arrested in October 2015. Both were sentenced to ten years in prison in October 2016 for espionage. The 85-year-old father was released from serving his sentence in 2020 but was unable to leave Iran despite medical problems.
dead end
“Siamak Namazi is back home with his parents in Tehran for the first time in seven years,” the lawyer said.
In June, in a column published in the New York Times, Siamak Namazi “begged” US President Joe Biden to reach an agreement on a prisoner swap with Tehran despite stalled nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Siamak Namazi’s hopes of his release were revived in 2021, he said, as indirect talks resumed between Washington and Tehran to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, from which former US President Donald Trump also resigned in 2018. These negotiations remain deadlocked.
Iranian power is facing a massive protest movement that began on September 16 when a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, died three days after being arrested for violating Iran’s strict dress code, which obliges women in particular to to wear the Islamic veil. The suppression of this movement has claimed at least 83 lives.
As recently as Saturday, demonstrations took place at several universities across the country to denounce this deadly crackdown, while rallies in solidarity with the movement were organized around the world, the largest in Iran since 2019.
Two other American citizens are being held in Iran: Emad Sharqi, an investor who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage, and Morad Tahbaz, also a British citizen, is being held in custody.