Mr.Hacker Posted September 19, 2023 Share Posted September 19, 2023 Left to right) Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz and Emad Shargi are to be freed from prison under the deal Five Americans who had been jailed for years in Iran are flying back home on Monday as a part of a controversial prisoner swap. The deal - mediated by Qatar - was reached when $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian funds held in South Korea reached banks in Doha. The Iranian oil money had been frozen as part of US sanctions. Five Iranians imprisoned in the US have also been released as part of the swap. Here is a look at the prisoners from both countries, some of whom are dual-citizens, involved in the exchange. The American prisonersm orad Tahbaz and fellow conservationists were using cameras to track endangered species when they were arrested Morad Tahbaz (UK-US) Tahbaz, a 67-year-old business man, was arrested in 2018 along with eight other Iranian conservationists in the midst of the country's crackdown on environmentalists.Siamak Namazi was arrested in 2015 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges The 51-year-old worked as head of strategic planning at the Dubai-based company Crescent Petroleum. Namazi was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards in October 2015, while his father Baquer, 86, was arrested in February 2016 after Iranian officials granted him permission to visit his son in prison. They were both eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Revolutionary Court for "co-operating with a foreign enemy state". Their lawyer has complained that the father and son were denied access to legal representation, held in solitary confinement and suffered health problems. Namazi is also alleged to have been tortured. In January 2023, Namazi went on a week-long hunger strike to protest against the failure of the US to free him and other dual nationals despite President Joe Biden's promise to make bringing them home a top priority. He was released to house arrest in August in anticipation of a prisoner exchange agreed to by the US and Iran. Emad Shargi (Iran-US)Reza Sarhangpour-Kafrani (Canada-Iran) Kafrani was charged in 2021 with the unlawful export of laboratory equipment from the US to Iran, through Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Kafrani was living in Montreal and owned a Canada-based company that conducted business in the US and other countries. US prosecutors allege Kafrani negotiated with a US company to buy mass spectrometry equipment to be shipped to Iran through Canada and the UAE. The US government requires a license to export the equipment to Iran and the UAE. Amin Hassanzadeh (Iran) Prosecutors allege Hassanzadeh, a permanent resident of the US, stole sensitive technical data from his employer and then sent it to his brother in Iran, who had connections to the Iranian military. He was charged in 2019 with interstate transportation of stolen property and fraud. Prosecutors say the engineer and visiting scholar at the University of Michigan participated in a year-long plan to steal confidential data about an aerospace industry project, allegedly emailing the confidential data to his brother in Iran just days after starting his job. Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi (US-Iran) Afrasiabi is an author who was arrested by the FBI at his home in Massachusetts for acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Iranian government. US officials say Iran was paying Afrasiabi to spread propaganda. "For over a decade, Kaveh Afrasiabi pitched himself to Congress, journalists, and the American public as a neutral and objective expert on Iran," Justice Department officials said in a statement. "However, all the while, Afrasiabi was actually a secret employee of the Government of Iran and the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations (IMUN) who was being paid to spread their propaganda." The Justice Department said the author sought to disguise propaganda as objective policy analysis and expertise to influence the public and US policymakers. They alleged Afrasiabi intentionally "evaded his obligation to disclose who was sponsoring his views"... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66651509 𝓒𝓢𝓞𝓢 𝓜𝓸𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts