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 March 15, 2015

 

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Prominent Iranian Dissident Blasts Obama From Jail: Letter



Heshmat Tabarzadi, a prominent Iranian prisoner of conscience jailed for leading protests against the regime, has smuggled a letter for President Obama to human rights activist Manda Ervin of the Alliance of Iranian Women, who made it available to FDI.

In the letter, he revealed that he is being held in a cell with American pastor Saeed Abedini in Rajai-Shahr prison outside Karaj, in the Tehran suburbs.

Chastising the American president about his failure to intercede on Abedini's behalf, Tabarzadi writes: "I heard that you met with his wife and children, and that his son, little Jacob, asked you to help release his father for his birthday. But we have not heard you demand the release of the hostage Abedini from the tyrant Khamenei."

The Iranian regime accused Tabarzadi of being one of the ring-leaders behind the student uprising of July 1999, and initially sentenced him to nine years in prison. Tabarzadi was released before the end of his sentence, after spending two years in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Tehran, on condition he refrain from public statements. He broke his silence after the mass demonstrations against the regime in 2009, and was arrested again on December 27, 2009 and sentenced to another eight years in jail.

The letter, which Mrs. Ervin translated and sent by registered mail to the White House, called on President Obama to maintain sanctions on Iran and to help the pro-freedom movement. "A large majority of the Iranian people are opposed to the Islamic regime," said Ervin, who has testified before Congressional committees on human rights issues and the oppression of women in Iran.

So far, the White House has not responded to the letter.

"You claim that the only choice that you have is either to make a deal with Khamenei -- which I believe means surrender -- or war… Mr. President; we Iranian people submit to you and the people of the world that there is another way.  Please sanction and weaken the illegal regime of Khamenei, and empower the people to overthrow this tyranny," Tabarzadi wrote.

FDI President Kenneth R. Timmerman said the letter shows that the pro-freedom movement in Iran is "alive and well, and is not fooled by the sham nuclear negotiations underway with the West."

The full next of the letter is available here.

Additional resources:

Tabarzadi was jailed in 2009 after writing an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal. After his arrest, the Wall Street Journal urged Western leaders to learn the names of Iranian dissidents.

Tabarzadi was adopted as a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International on April 6, 2011. Read their brief on his case here.

After a furlough from prison to attend to his ailing mother, Tabarzadi was re-arrested in January 2014.


 
Media contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman
President & CEO
Foundation for Democracy in Iran
301-946-2918
exec@iran.org

Manda Ervin:
Alliance of Iranian Women
mzervin@comcast.net