October 04-2013
The ailing father of Amir Hekmati has sent a letter to President Rohani asking for the release of his son.
“I long more than ever to see Amir’s face. I am now very sick with a brain tumor…. I ask that you let me see him again, one more time, and so that he may lead our family when I am gone,” Ali Hekmati wrote.
Dr. Ali Hekmati is a professor at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan.
Rohani spoke last week over the phone with President Obama and the White House said Obama raised, by name, the cases of the three Americans detained in Iran—Hekmati, Pastor Saeed Abedini and Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent.
Hekmati, a former Marine, has been incarcerated since August 2011 under suspicion of being an American spy. He was sentenced to death, but an appellate court in Iran overturned his original conviction in March 2012. He has not had a new trial yet.
Hekmati was in the midst of a two-week visit to Tehran to see his grandmother when he was taken into custody. Iranian officials claimed Amir Hekmati was acting as a spy for the CIA. The Hekmati family and US officials deny the allegation.
“They say each moment we spend with our children should be treasured,” Ali Hekmati wrote in the letter. “I am not sure those words ever rang true to me until Amir did not come home from his trip to Iran to visit his grandmother two years ago.”
Ali Hekmati had surgery in September of last year to remove a brain tumor that doctors found after he had been admitted to a hospital for a stroke. At the time, doctors gave him only a year to live.
Amir’s twin sister has been trying to keep her father’s strength up. “I’m afraid my dad won’t be able to see my brother again,” said Leila Hekmati.
Amir was born in Arizona but spent most of his life in Michigan. He was supposed to start a master’s degree program at the University of Michigan right after he finished his first visit ever to Iran.