January 25, 2019
A recently freed Iranian political prisoner says he was held in the Mashhad prison along with an American named Michael White, whom he said has been detained since last summer.
The US government and the Iranian government later confirmed that White is jailed in Iran. Iran did not say why he was being held. White’s mother told The New York Times January 7 that the State Department called her three weeks earlier to say it had learned her son was being held by Iran.
IranWire said an Ivar Farhadi said he was confined to Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison last October after being arrested for posting social media comments critical of the regime.
“What struck me as odd was that a few of the inmates were foreign nationals, including an American named Michael White,” he told IranWire. He said White told him he was 45, came from San Diego and had previously served in the US Navy. His mother told the Times her son was now 46, and lived in Imperial Beach, south of San Diego.
A veterans’ website said White served 13 years in the US Navy, then earned a BA in political science from San Diego State University and was hoping to go to law school in the future. His mother said he spent 13 years in the Navy, mainly as a cook, and left the service about a decade ago. Before going to Iran last summer, he had worked as a janitor, she said in a statement.
She said her son was being treated for cancer and appealed for his release so he could resume his treatment, which earlier included chemotherapy.
White told Farhadi he had come to know an Iranian woman online and had traveled to Iran three times to visit her. At the end of the third visit, White and the woman tried to fly to Turkey together. He was arrested at Mashhad’s airport.
White’s mother said her son had traveled to Iran “five or six” times to visit the girlfriend, who was not named. It is not known if she has been arrested.
Farhadi said that White was not in good psychological shape and was barred from receiving visitors or using a telephone. Farhadi said White said he suffered from a tumor in his neck. When Farhadi last saw White, White knew of no charges laid against him.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi assailed the “US media,” accusing them of carrying false reports that White was being poorly treated in captivity as part of a scheme to spread anti-Iran propaganda and escalate psychological warfare against Iran. He did not say that all the US media was quoting was what Farhadi and White’s mother said.
Farhadi said he himself had a two-minute trial for his social media posts and was sentenced to six years in prison. When he was freed pending appeal, he escaped to Turkey and told IranWire about White.
Farhadi said he searched online after his release and found a few pictures of White.
White is the third American who is not Iranian-born understood to be detained currently in Iran. One other is Xiyue Wang, who is Chinese-born and a graduate student at Princeton University. He was arrested in 2016 while doing research on Qajar history and sentenced to 10 years for espionage. The other is Robert Levinson, a private detective who was last seen in the hands of Iranian police on Kish Island in 2007 while investigating cigarette smuggling.
In additional Iran holds dual nationals Baquer Namazi and his son, Siamak, and art dealer Karen Vafadari. Iran also detains Vafadari’s wife, Iranian citizen Afarin Neyssari, and Lebanese citizen Nazir Zakka, both of whom holds American green cards.
White is the first American, either dual national or otherwise, to be locked away in Iran since President Trump was inaugurated two years ago this month. As a candidate, Trump assailed the federal government for failing to do enough to bring captive Americans home from Iran.
On October 23, 2016, two weeks before the presidential election, Trump tweeted, “Well, Iran has done it again. Taken two of our people and asking for a fortune for their release. This doesn’t happen if I’m president!”
Trump has thus far said nothing about White.