There was much speculation on social media about how Shahrzad Mir-Gholikhan, 35, won her freedom, with talk of Omani intervention and rumors that she had been exchanged for some American held in Iran. But, actually, she was simply released at the end of her term as specified by the US federal judge who sent her to prison.
Her case was an odd one and was controversial even in the United 
States. She had assisted her husband—now former husband—in the smuggling scheme. She spoke good English and served as his translator. She insisted that was all she did. Prosecutors said she did much more.
US law enforcement pursued her abroad. She agreed to come to the United States and plead guilty, with the understanding that she would serve no prison time. But the court discovered that was not permitted under US law and she would have to serve a longer term. Mir-Gholikhan screamed. She withdrew her guilty plea and demanded a full-fledged trial, which resulted in her being found guilty and being sentenced to an even longer term.
Soon she became something of a poster-child for regime criticism of the US judicial system. But the theme was that she had been jailed on no evidence. The confusion of what US law allowed was never explained in Iran.
Dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans have been imprisoned for helping Iran break sanctions by smuggling forbidden gear to Iran. But Mir-Gholikhan is the first one to receive celebrity billing from the Islamic Republic.
It probably helped that she was a woman, an attractive one at that, and had twin daughters who were often filmed for state television pleading for their mother’s return.
Mir-Gholikhan now says she will file a lawsuit against the United States in an international court for her “illegal detention.” She didn’t say where she thought she could file such a case. The International Court of Justice in The Hague only handles cases between states; individuals cannot file suits there.
In an interview with PressTV this week, Mir-Gholikhan said she had been tortured in prison. “They put me in prison. The first 18 months were horrible because I was in all ways tortured. Physically—not beating me, but keeping me for 18 hours in a freezing cell all in chains—chains around my waist and my hands and my feet. And they always put the chains and handcuffs in a way that my skin would come off.”
Mir-Gholikhan and her then-husband, Mahmud Seif, were indicted in 2005 by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on charges of conspiring to obtain 3,000 Generation III night vision goggles for the Iranian military.
The pair was arrested in 2004 in Vienna, Austria, after meeting with two undercover agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE was acting on a tip that Tehran was looking to illegally import the goggles.
Efforts to extradite her and her ex-husband from Austria failed as the pair returned to Iran. But in December 2007, Mir-Gholikhan traveled to South Florida and voluntarily presented herself to the authorities to plead guilty in a pre-arranged deal that was expected to sentence her to no time in jail.
In April 2008, she testified in court that her main role was acting as a translator and go-between for her husband, who does not speak English.
Days after her guilty plea and a sentence of time served, prosecutors said they had used the wrong sentencing guidelines and a new sentence of 29 months was issued
Mir-Gholikhan then withdrew her guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to export the military goggles without a license. But by doing so, Mir-Gholikhan faced re-trial based on all seven counts of the grand jury indictment.
In the re-trial, Mir-Gholikhan insisted she was under Seif’s control and denied using the pseudonym “Farideh Fahimi,” the name of the woman in numerous recorded phone calls and intercepted e-mails linked to the goggles deal. But Assistant US Attorney Michael Walleisa accused the defendant of inventing a “surreal spy thriller” in an effort to escape responsibility. He said Mir-Gholikhan’s testimony was in “direct conflict with the evidence in the case” showing the woman with Seif intimately involved in the crime.
Mir-Gholikhan rapidly grew incensed at her treatment in the United States.
The Associated Press reported that in one of her several handwritten court filings, Mir-Gholikhan said she looked forward to eventually leaving the “devil-land of America.” She also compared herself to a lioness.
“The bottom line is you are playing with … a real and true she-lion, who is the Queen of the Jungle,” Mir-Gholikhan wrote. “A she-lion is much stronger than a he-lion.”
The Generation III night vision goggles are extremely sensitive because they give the United States a key advantage during night operations. Army Col. Kevin McDonnell, testifying in a similar 2008 smuggling case, said US enemies who obtain such goggles would be better equipped to kill American soldiers, shoot down US aircraft and figure out how to design their own competing version of the goggles.
After Mir-Gholikhan’s release last week, Majlis Deputy Mansur Haqiqatpur, vice chair of the National Security Committee, said the leveling of unfounded accusations against Iranians by the United States proves the flagrant violation of human rights standards by the Americans.
“Washington kept Mir-Gholikhan in jail for years without any evidence to prove that she was guilty,” he said, ignoring the fact that she had pleaded guilty initially.
He said, “Washington has never sought to exhibit lawful and logical behavior and thinks it can do whatever it wishes in the world.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said the United States is responsible for the torments Mir-Gholikhan suffered. He said the American conduct toward her reflects US animosity for the Iranian people. For decades it has been a frequent theme of the Islamic Republic that the United States doesn’t just hate the Islamic Republic but the people of Iran as well.
Mehman-Parast said the treatment meted out to Mir-Gholikhan should serve “as a warning to Iranians of the consequences of traveling to the United States.”
Two years ago, PressTV broadcast what it said was an exclusive interview with Mir-Gholikhan from her prison cell in Connecticut.
“The US government invited me for government business,” she said then. “They even took a ticket for me…. They put me in handcuffs at the airport and put me in the prison and started to torture me in every possible way.”
She said she was duped into visiting the United States by authorities who then tried to “make me a spy” and use her to track down her ex-husband, who was accused of being the principal in the smuggling scheme.
She said her conditions had grown worse in the weeks after Iran released Sarah Shourd, one of the three American hikers jailed in 2009. She said US media censorship of her case increased after Shourd’s release in September 2010.
Indeed, a computer search showed no mention of Mir-Gholikhan in the American press in the weeks after Shourd was released. But then there had been only one mention of her after she was convicted in April 2009. There are usually few mentions of people in the US media once their trials end and they are sent off to prison.
Mir-Gholikhan did not explain how the censorship of her case had increased if she was permitted to have a telephone interview with PressTV.
She said that on October 23, 2010, “Out of the blue, they came and put me in handcuffs and took me to the SHU [Special Housing Units] where the most horrible and dangerous criminals are kept.” Mir-Gholikhan was incarcerated at the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut. It is a minimum-security prison for women only.
Mir-Gholikhan said, “They started to torture me in every possible way, especially mentally. They horribly tortured [me] mentally to become a spy.”
In March 2009, US District Judge James I. Cohn imposed a sentence of five years and three months on Mir-Gholikhan. Because of time served during her trial, she was scheduled for release in July 2012.
