Jailed Iranian-American Esha Momeni Returns Home to California

Aug. 19, 2009 — -- Esha Momeni went to Iran 10 months ago to study the women's rights movement, as work for her graduate thesis at California State University-Northridge. She returned last week to U.S. soil after weeks in prison and months barred from leaving the Islamic Republic.

Momeni, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was arrested Oct. 15, 2008, as she was driving in Tehran. Security officials later went to her home and confiscated videotapes of her thesis research -- interviews with prominent women's rights activists. She was accused of propaganda against the state and acting against national security.

Momeni, 29, was sent to Section 209 of Evin Prison, run by state intelligence and security. Her professors and friends at California State launched a campaign for her release, echoed by human rights activists and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Momeni spent more than three weeks in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer, broken up by 10- to 12-hour stretches of questioning.

"I had 19 interrogation sessions," she told ABC News. "Even though it was so scary, I would rather be there, because the time would pass more quickly."

Momeni, who was born in Los Angeles after her family left Iran, was not physically harmed but, she said, the psychological pressure was intense.

Taking as evidence her meetings with reform advocates and women's rights groups, her interrogators accused her of being part of a "velvet revolution" against the regime. "They kept asking, 'Who's behind your project? Who sent you to come here? Who paid you? Have you ever met a CIA agent? Have you met an FBI agent?' Then they'd say, 'If you confess, we'll help you, we'll let you go,'" she said, adding that they pushed her for a signed confession.

"I would just write and write for hours, they'd just tear it up and say, 'You're lying.' I kept saying look, 'If you want to tell the story, write it down. I don't know it, I can't make it up."

After 28 days in Evin, Momeni was released Nov. 10, 2008, after her family posted $200,000 bail. Even after her release, however. life didn't return to normal. Prison time was difficult but, she said, living in fear on the outside was even harder.

"At least when you're inside, you know your limitations," she said. "You know I can walk this much, I can go out this much, I can see sky this much. When you're out and it seems you're free, they actually make you feel terrible."

Her interrogators kept calling, and Momeni was in court at least twice a week. At one hearing, court officials replayed a private conversation between her sister and friends at the family home in Tehran, where the family had resettled after living in California. Momeni was sure her house had been bugged. Authorities kept her passport and, on Jan. 13, 2008, Ali Reza Jamshidi, spokesman for Iran's judiciary, said she was officially banned from leaving Iran.