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.
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Rezaian was arrested July 22, 2014, while working as the newspaper’s Iran correspondent.
Rezaian, 39, faces charges including “espionage, collaboration with hostile governments, gathering classified information and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic republic”, according to his lawyer. She was released on bail in October but he has been held for months without charges in solitary confinement at Iran’s Evin Prison.
“I don’t think that anybody’s done enough until he’s out”, Ali Rezaian told NBC News on Wednesday.
“In a year’s time, no evidence has been produced of espionage or any other offense”, Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.
On Tuesday, President Obama promised to win Rezaian’s release, telling USA war veterans that the United States was “not going to relent until we bring home our Americans who are unjustly detained in Iran”.
“Every aspect of this case – his incarceration, his trial, the conditions of his imprisonment – has been a disgraceful violation of human rights and it violates common decency”, Baron added. But Rezaian remains in jail without another trial date publicly scheduled.
The newspaper filed a petition with the council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention seeking action to press Tehran to free Rezaian, one of four Americans detained or missing in Iran whose release is being sought openly by the US administration. Jay Kennedy, the newspaper’s general counsel, said the tactic hadn’t been tried sooner because “we never expected his detention to last this long”.
It was the first confirmation by the Iranians of any talks that may have involved the fate of Rezaian and other US prisoners in Iran: former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, and retired FBI agent Robert Levinson.
Ali Rezaian, brother of the Post’s Tehran bureau chief, said he was disappointed that Iran didn’t release the journalist when an agreement was reached last week to limit Iran’s nuclear program, even though the case wasn’t part of the negotiations.
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“We remain very, very hopeful that Iran will make the decision to do the right thing and to return those citizens to the United States”, Kerry said in an MSNBC interview. All except Rezaian were later released.
