December 25 2020
A court in Iran has handed a nine-year jail sentence to a British-Iranian anthropologist, Kameel Ahmady, after convicting him of conducting “subversive” research work, the Tasnim news agency reported.
It was the latest in a raft of actions against dual nationals. But in this case, Ahmady appeared to have actually done something that offended the Iranian authorities—researched the practices of child marriage and female genital mutilation in Iran.
Ahmady was also fined 600,000 euros ($1 million)—the sum Iranian authorities said he received for his research from institutions accused of seeking to topple Iran’s Islamic government, Tasnim reported.
There was no immediate official comment on the sentence, which was also reported by other Iranian news agencies and human rights groups, as well as by Ahmady’s lawyer, who said that he would appeal.
“Ahmady was accused of acquiring illicit property from his cooperation in implementing subversive institutions’ projects in the country,” Tasnim said.
Ahmady, an ethnic Kurd, was detained in August 2019 but released on bail three months later, according to human rights groups.
Ahmady said on Twitter he had been denied access to a lawyer during his detention.
“Contrary to all … hope for a fair trial, I was sentenced after being denied access to a lawyer during 100 days of detention and extrajudicial interrogations, and after two unprofessional trial sessions full of judicial violations,” Ahmady tweeted.
After Ahmady’s arrest, his wife told the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) that his work was independent and published with government approval.
Child marriage is a common practice in the Islamic Republic and encouraged by some clerics. Female genital mutilation, however, is a practice among minority groups that is not commonly recognized by the Shiite clergy. But there has not been much effort to suppress it either.
