The Dutch foreign minister called the hanging an “act committed by a barbaric regime” and then froze all relations with Iran It explained that meant Iranian diplomats in Holland will have to have permission to have any contact with Dutch diplomats or civil servants. The ministry said it was not severing relations because it wanted to continue to have contact with Bahrami’s family in Tehran. (In Tehran, the Foreign Ministry simply denied that Holland had taken any action to restrict relations.)
Opposition figures said Bahrami was arrested in December 2009 while attending the last big post-election protest and only later charged with drug trafficking. The Tehran media said the story about her being arrested at a protest was a Western invention and that she had been arrested originally on drug charges.
Bahrami’s daughter, Banafsheh Nayebpour, said family members had spoken with Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafar-Dolatabadi and he had made several promises to them on condition that they not talk to the media. But the daughter said he had failed to live up to his promises and instead hanged Bahrami.
“I am her daughter and I do not accept any of these charges. My mother said in court that she had confessed during her interrogation because she had been forced to. She doesn’t even smoke, let alone deal in drugs.”
The family said Bahrami was a musician. The Tehran’s prosecutor’s office said Bahrami was “a member of an international drug smuggling gang who, together with her Dutch connection, smuggled cocaine from the Netherlands to Iran.”
It said a search of her Tehran home found 450 grams of cocaine and 420 grams of opium and revealed that she had sold 150 grams of cocaine. The announcement said she was hanged for possessing and selling cocaine.
Three days after her hanging, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the state news agency, reported that Bahrami had been convicted in 2003 by a Dutch court for smuggling almost 16 kilos of cocaine from the Caribbean into Holland. It also said she was convicted in another Dutch court in 2007 of forging a passport. The Iran Times could not confirm those assertions before press deadline.
The Dutch consul was never allowed to visit Bahrami after her arrest as the Islamic Republic does not recognize dual citizenship and did not consider Bahrami to be a Dutch citizen.
Holland was not even told about the execution until news stories appeared and the Dutch Foreign Ministry asked what had happened to Bahrami. Officials seemed especially incensed because they had enquired about Bahrami and been told Friday, the day before she was hanged, that “all judicial means had not yet been exhausted.”
Bahrami’s daughter told Radio Netherlands in January that her mother was awaiting trial in a second capital case that accused her of membership in an armed opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq. It wasn’t known if that trial ever took place, but the announcement of her execution made no mention of any such charge.
A Dutch official told the Associated Press that Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal would go before his fellow EU foreign ministers this week and seek unspecified “collective measures” against Iran. There was hint as to what measures Holland was contemplating.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry complained that the West was being two-faced in complaining about Bahrami’s execution. Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said, “It is expected that the Western countries appreciate Iran’s efforts to combat drug trafficking and even cooperate accordingly.” He did not acknowledge that no Western country executes anyone for drug offenses.
In the past week, the busy court system in Iran has also condemned two men to die after conviction for operating pornographic websites. It also hanged seven people in Karaj and three in Urumiyeh on drug charges and three men in Tehran for homosexual rape, bringing the total number of executions in the first four weeks of the new year to 65, according to a count kept by Agence France Presse, or an average of one every 10 hours. The Green Movement said the executions for the period December 19 through January 19 came to 97. Both numbers are far above the norm. The AFP count for all of last year came to 179.