March 16, 2018
The wife of Kavous SeyedEmami, the Iranian-Canadian environmentalist who died in Evin prison last month, was stopped at Imam Khomeini International Airport last Thursday and barred from leaving the country, her sons said.
The widow, Maryam Mom-beini, 55, is, like her husband, a dual Iranian-Canadian citizen and was trying to fly to Van-couver.
She was stopped by plainclothes agents as she and her two adult sons, Ramin and Mehran, were boarding a Lufthansa flight. Her passport was seized, Ramin Seyed-Emami said.
“They have ripped our family apart once,” said Mehran, referring to their father’s death. “Now they are doing it again, by keeping our mom in Iran.”
Both sons, who are also Canadian citizens, were allowed to board the flight, as were the family’s three German shorthaired pointer dogs.
Kavous Seyed-Emami, one of the founders of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, was arrested January 24 with six other environmental activists and was accused of spying. Within weeks, he was dead at age 63.
The authorities say Seyed-Emami hanged himself in a high-security isolation cell in Evin Prison after two weeks of interrogation. The family doubts that story, however, and accuses the authorities of being responsible for the death. The police refused to turn over the body to the family, as it requested, for an independent autopsy.
“The day he entered that facility, he died,” Ramin Seyed-Emami said.
After talking publicly about his death, the brothers said they were subjected to intimidation attempts and harassment by the same agents who had arrested their father.
In an emailed statement, Ramin Seyed-Emami, a popular singer in Iran who performs under the stage name King Raam, said those risks had convinced the family that they could no longer stay in Iran.
“After being constantly harassed and threatened, our family has decided, for the sake of our own safety, to leave Iran and head to Vancouver, where we can start a new peaceful life,” the statement said. “Although we are coming there with nothing, since the government raided our home and seized all of our valuables (most importantly deeds to our homes), we can no longer stand this state of constant terror.”
He elaborated on those threats in a telephone conversation with The New York Times. “Our lawyers have been told that we need to keep our mouths shut,” he said. “In the street, people have bumped into me, saying I should be careful not to be ‘suicided’.”
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a Twitter post and a press release that she was “outraged” Mrs. Mombeini had not been allowed to leave Iran. “We demand that, as a Canadian, she be given the freedom to return home,” the statement said. Freeland did not go on camera to make the statement.