Amir Hekmati, an Iranian American and ex-US marine who has spent more than three and a half years in Tehran’s Evin Prison, has appealed to Iran’s Head of the Supreme Court, asking him to reopen his case and outlining the illegality of the charges against him.
In a letter to Hojatoleslam Hossein Karimi, the former marine describes how he was forced into giving a confession and insists that the authorities have no evidence against him.
Hekmati explains how, in 2011, after being held in solitary confinement for four months, the authorities took him to a Tehran hotel, gave him cigarettes and food, and told him he would be released if he confessed to the charges against him. He was also told that the confession would be used to help train other intelligence agents. Though he initially refused, on the basis that what he was being asked to say was untrue, he eventually agreed, hoping he would be able to speak to his family.
However the authorities did not release him, nor did it seem they had any intention of doing so. “It was only after the video was broadcast that I understood the swamp I was stuck in as a result of a political game,” Hekmati writes. “Now I understand that this fabricated video and this baseless propaganda was meant to prepare public opinion and the court, because my verdict was issued with that film.”
Hekmati travelled to Iran in 2011 to visit his grandmother – Iranian officials assured him before he arrived that his military background would not be problematic. But just days after his arrival, he was arrested and charged him with espionage. He was later sentenced to death in a secret trial, and then tried a second time on a charge of collaborating with the United States. For this, he received a reduced sentence of 10 years' in prison.
Hekmati has written to Iranian authorities before, including to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in January 2015, and to the head of the Iranian judiciary, Sadegh Ardeshir Amoli Larijani, and Mahmoud Alavi, the Minister of Intelligence in December 2014, each time urging them to consider his case with “understanding and compassion.”
“When I arrived in Iran,” Hekmati tells Karimi in his recent letter, “I didn’t speak Persian and knew only a few words. I went directly to my grandmother’s home and had a family get-together because it was my first visit to Iran and I was enthusiastic about my motherland. Based on what evidence does the Intelligence Ministry present me as an elite CIA agent? I couldn’t speak Persian and they couldn’t find any activity by me except going to family parties.”
Hekmati addresses Karimi as “Honorable Judge” and “Honorable Head of the Supreme Court,” and tells him that he also wrote to the Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Salavati. He describes how, prior to his trial, the judge informed Hekmati that the court was assigning a lawyer to him, as his counsel was deemed unsuitable. According to Hekmati, he was only given 30 seconds to talk to his lawyer. He was charged with trying to “infiltrate the Intelligence Ministry.”
“A week after a 20-minute trial,” Hekmati writes, “Judge Salavati of Branch 15 condemned me to death for ‘war against God and the state.’”
Hekmati also points out in his letter that his continued incarceration violates sharia law, as well as the Iranian constitution. He says that the Supreme Leader’s Book of Fatwas clearly states that serving in another country’s military force is not illegal, and that, even if authorities believed he travelled to Iran to commit a crime, they have no evidence to prove it. “There was not a shred of evidence against me except the confessions, which were extracted with deceit, torture and threats while I was in solitary and blindfolded,” he writes. Under Iran’s penal code, he points out, it is unlawful to imprison someone with the “intent to commit a crime” for more than one year.
“I have several questions now that the verdict has been issued,” Hekmati writes. “I ask the Intelligence Ministry and Judge Salavati to present only one piece of evidence that I have worked with the CIA. Shouldn’t Judge Salavati have a strong piece of evidence when he denies me the right to live? Should my pictures on my personal mobile phone, mementos from the time when I was a soldier, deny me the right to live?”
“Why, after three years and six months,” he asks Karimi, “have I not been permitted to meet with my lawyer? Why can I not see my own case? What injustice or sin have I committed against the Iranian government to deserve this heavy punishment?”
Read the full letter here.
Plus: Incarcerated Former Marine Releases Letter From Evin Prison
Interested in writing for IranWire?
Share your stories.
comments