The Washington Post Petitions UN to Help Free Imprisoned Journalist Jason Rezaian
The move comes on the first anniversary of his arrest in Iran.
— -- The Washington Post is demanding the United Nations help secure the release of its correspondent held in Tehran.
On the first anniversary of his arrest, the newspaper accuses Iran of breaching the reporter’s human rights in a year of “arbitrary and unlawful” detention, claiming he has been “humiliated, mistreated, and deprived of even the most basic facilities. At various points in his detention, he has even been denied access to a bathroom.”
Jason Rezaian is now the longest-held Western journalist to be imprisoned in Iran since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Rezaian, 39, is a dual US-Iranian citizen. Born In California, he began reporting from Iran in 2008 before becoming the Post’s bureau chief in Tehran in 2012.
He’s not the first U.S. reporter to fall foul of suspicion in Iran.
In 2009, reporter Roxana Saberi was arrested and convicted of spying. She was freed after 101 days on appeal. But a year after he was detained, his family say Rezaian has been held in solitary confinement in Iran’s most notorious jail and subjected to grueling interrogations and repeated deprivations.
The charges against Rezaian have never been made public -- he’s being tried in secret. But Iranian news agencies say he too has been charged been charged with espionage -- charges the Committee to Protect Journalists say could end with a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison. This week in a letter to the head of Iran’s judiciary, the CPJ said the reporter has been denied any real opportunity to defend himself against the charges -- and demanded his immediate return to his family.
On Tuesday, President Obama promised to win Rezaian’s release, telling U.S. war veterans that the United States was “not going to relent until we bring home our Americans who are unjustly detained in Iran."