We are pleased to report that Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., who had been arrested in Tehran on May 8, 2007, on grounds that she was being investigated for “crimes against national security,” was permitted to leave Iran on September 2. Esfandiari is a dual citizen of the United States and Iran and a frequent visitor to Iran. Her arrest and subsequent incarceration, which included some three and a half months in solitary confinement in the notorious Evin Prison, was reportedly preceded by her being questioned at length over several months by Iranian intelligence officials about the activities and programs of the Wilson Center’s Middle East programs.
The Association wrote a letter of protest on May 21, addressed to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, decrying Esfandiari’s “arrest as inimical to internationally accepted principles of the free pursuit of knowledge. We reject the premise that displeasure with what scholars write about government policies or with scholarly projects with which they are associated are appropriate bases for their being detained, questioned, and arrested by government authorities.” The letter went on to urge that Esfandiari “be released from prison immediately and that she be allowed to return to her academic work in the United States, consistent with the traditional freedom of the Iranian academic community and with principles of academic freedom that are essential to independent scholarly endeavors around the world.”
After her release, Esfandiari issued a statement expressing gratitude for the support she had received from “the many organizations and hundreds of individuals all over the world that called and worked for my freedom.”
(9/07)