February 28, 2020
An Iranian appeals court has upheld a 10-year prison term for Iranian-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz.
The court also upheld the sentences on seven other people, all of whom were active in running a wildlife conservation group that was trying to save such animals as the cheetah.
They had planted ground-level cameras in Semnan province in the habitat of the cheetah seeking to learn how many survived. Prosecutors said the cameras were used to spy on Iran’s missile program. It turns out that Iran has a secret rocket engine test site adjacent to the national park where the cheetahs live and the cameras were placed.
Judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossain Esmaili said Tahbaz and Niloufar Bayani received the longest sentences of 10 years each for spying, and were ordered to return the money Iran asserts they received from the United States.
Esmaili said two other activists, Houman Jokar and Taher Ghadirian, each got eight-year sentences for allegedly “collaborating with the hostile government of America.”
Another three of the activists, Sam Rajabi, Sepideh Kashan-Doust and Amir-Hossain Khaleghi-Hamidi, were sentenced to six years each. The eighth activist, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, got four years.
All were arrested in February 2018. A ninth activist who was arrested at the time, Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian-Canadian national, died while in custody weeks after his arrest. His widow then was blocked from flying out of Iran for more than a year.
Iran is still detaining at least four Americans. Businessman Siamak Namazi and his 81-year-old father, Baquer, are both serving 10-year prison sentences on espionage charges. The father has reportedly been allowed out of prison on an indefinite furlough. Michael White has been detained in Mashhad since July 2018. And Karan Vafadari, an art gallery owner, and his wife, Afarin Neyssari, who holds a US green card, have reportedly been freed on payment of bail, but barred from leaving Iran.
Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007, remains missing.