family’s lawyer have apparently been arrested in Tabriz as the government tightens its noose in the case of the woman sentenced to be stoned for adultery.
The son, Sajjad Ghader-zadeh, 22, disappeared Monday and seems to have been arrested six days after he said that he and his 17-year-old sister, Saideh, had appealed to Italy to give them asylum.
A report from the International Committee Against the Death Penalty and the International Committee Against Stoning said the son and lawyer appear to have been arrested along with two German journalists during an interview in the office of the family lawyer, Javid Hutan Kian, around 7 pm Sunday.
Public Prosecutor Gholam-Hossain Mohseni-Ejai announced the arrest of two foreign nationals “posing” as journalists. But he said nothing about Ashtiani’s son or lawyer.
Mohseni-Ejai spoke vaguely and avoided conveying much information. He focused on the foreigners—whose nationality he did not announce—while sidestepping the question of the son and lawyer.
More information was later provided by Mina Ahadi, a Germany-based activist who was on the phone with the journalists when the arrests were made. Mohseni-Ejai alluded to her simply as “a fugitive.”
Mohseni-Ejai told reporters, “I learned today a fugitive in a foreign country had contacted Ashtiani’s family and said two journalists were coming to interview them on her case. Then two nationals of that country have gone and interviewed Ashtiani’s son. In the meantime, another person got suspicious of them and informed officials.”
Mohseni-Ejai said the “foreigners” were arrested for entering the country as tourists when that was not their intention. “An investigation by official authorities showed these people are not journalists and they have been arrested for faking their journalistic status,” he was quoted by the website of Iran state television as saying. But if they came in as tourists, then they had not claimed to the Iranian government to be journalists. Mohseni-Ejai did not explain this discrepancy.
Mina Ahadi, a spokeswoman for the International Committee Against Stoning, told CNN she had helped set up the interview by two German journalists with Ghaderzadeh and the lawyer.
Ahadi was on a conference call with the group in the lawyer’s Tabriz office to translate the interview. Over the phone, she heard one journalist yell, “What is happening, what is going on?” then saying, “Mrs. Ahadi, I have to hang up the phone now.” Ahadi said she could hear loud knocking on the door before the call ended. She has not been able to connect with either the journalists or Ghaderzadeh since.
“Normally we talk to each other daily,” she said of Ashtiani’s son. “I’ve spoken to friends of Sajjad in Tabriz, and they’ve had no news either,” Ahadi said. “I’m 100 percent sure they’ve been arrested, but we don’t know where they are.”
There was no indication of the fate of Ashtiani’s youngest child, 17-year-old Saideh.
According to Iran Human Rights Association spokesman Mahmud Moghaddam, the arrests of Sajjad Ghaderzadeh and Hutan Kian were not surprising. “We thought it could happen any time and were extremely concerned. They were probably arrested now because the international spotlight on the case has dimmed,” he said.
Indeed, the global focus does seem to have lessened, at least as measured by the number of people signing an online petition calling for Ashtiani’s release. As of Tuesday, some 347,820 signatures were reported on the petitions carried at www.freesakineh.org. That was an increase of just a 175 signatures a day for the preceding week, a substantial decline. Here are the daily averages over the last 10 weeks starting with this past week:
175
275
365
1,000
3,800
11,400
3,700
2,200
3,600
2,000
Sajjad and Saideh Ghader-zadeh, Ashtiani’s children, have continued to seek international help. “The authorities do not respond to any of our inquiries about our mother’s situation and we, along with our lawyer, are completely alone and our only hope is tied to the international community,” Sajjad Ghader-zadeh told the Italian news service Adnkronos International (AKI), last Tuesday..
“Our condition continually gets more difficult and we are scared of getting arrested,” he said. “Considering the attention Italy has given to our case, we are asking [Italian Prime Minister] Silvio Berlusconi for political asylum so we can have a place to find refuge in case we are persecuted by the government.”
Their lawyer, Hutan Kian, also told Italian media, “According to information I am hearing from the Tabriz prosecutor’s office, they have a plan to fabricate political charges against the children. According to my sources, the prosecutor’s office is trying to coerce two prisoners to make false confessions accusing the children of spreading anti-government fliers.”
Rajanews, a website affiliated with government supporters, has complained that the children are intentionally harming the reputation of the country by publicizing their mother’s case.
The crackdown raises questions about Ashtiani’s immediate fate. Mahmud Moghaddam, the spokesman for the Iran Human Rights Association, said Monday, “The risk that Sakineh Moham-madi-Ashtiani will be executed is even greater now.”
