Journalist Amir Ali Allamehzadeh was arrested in September 2011 and kept in solitary confinement for 95 days because he worked with the BBC. During this time, he was tortured and denied legal representation. Since his release, Amir continues to work as a journalist writing for Etemad and other newspapers.
Name: Amir Ali Allamehzadeh
Career: Journalist; worked with various publications including Ham Shahri, Etemad, Bahar, Shahrvand and Shargh; editor of international news at Iran’s Labor News Agency (ILNA).
Charges: Propaganda against the regime because of his work with the BBC.
Amir Ali Allamehzadeh was arrested at dawn on 18 September 2011 as he was leaving his home to go to work. Two cars and several security agents were waiting for him, confiscated his house keys and cellphone and showed him a large piece of paper displaying the logo of the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Protection Organization. They searched his home and confiscated personal belongings including his laptop, computer storage devices and CDs. He was then was taken to Evin Prison, which he figured out by mentally following the route they took during the drive.
Allamehzadeh spent a total of 95 days in solitary confinement. Every morning and afternoon, he was blindfolded and taken out of his cell for half an hour to go to the “exercise yard”, a small open space of several meters cramped between two walls.
When it rained or snowed or the weather was cold, this exercise was canceled because prison clothing was too thin. When Allamehzadeh was released on bail shortly before December 2011, he was wearing the same clothes he was given in the warm month of September.
During his last month in detention, he shared his solitary-sized cell with another inmate who had also spent a year in solitary confinement. A number of jailed journalists have subsequently recalled how the guards used to call the sharing of these 1x2-meter cells “the common wards.”
Allamehzadeh’s case was never reviewed by a judge. At the time of his arrest, his sister, Zeinab Allamehzadeh, told the media, “the interrogations have taken place without a lawyer present.” The family eventually secured a lawyer in December. In later interrogations, when his lawyer was present, he told the magistrate he had been tortured.
In summer 2013, Allamehzadeh was summoned to the prosecution office at Evin Prison, but his attorney was not permitted to accompany him and so he was forced to defend himself.
Fifteen days later he was summoned to court and told he could receive his proof of bail back. Allamehzadeh thanked the magistrate for his “independent judgment” and asked for a copy of the order so as to have peace of mind. But he was then told in response that the “Revolutionary Court’s verdicts were verbal.”
They gave him back his proof of bail but none of his personal belongings. When he enquired about them, he was told that when the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization “deem it prudent they will return your belongings.”
Following his release, Allamehzadeh remained in Tehran working as a journalist for Ham Shari, Etemad and Shahrvand newspapers and teaching at the Tehran University of Applied Science and Technology.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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