December 23, 2016
In an unusual intervention by a foreign diplomat, the former Italian ambassador to Iran has made a public appeal for the release of Karan Vafadari, an Iranian-American dual national, and his wife.
The couple stands accused of serving alcohol at parties at which foreigners attended.
Ambassador Roberto Tos-cano, who served in Tehran from 2003 to 2008, said he frequently attended social events hosted by the Vafadaris.
He called them “the most dignified people I met during the five years I spent as Italy’s ambassador to Tehran.”
In an open letter shared with the International Campaign for
Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), Toscano wrote that it was “impossible” for him to remain silent after learning of the arrests. Toscano is now retired from the Italian diplomatic service.
The couple, art gallery owners in Tehran and prominent in the Iranian artistic and cultural community, have been held at Evin Prison, without access to counsel, since their arrest in July by the Pasdaran, allegedly for “engaging in corruption and depravity” by serving alcohol at their home.
“Having been a witness and a participant of this ‘corruption,’ I believe I have the duty to speak up. Karam Vafadari and Afarin Niasari are among the most refined, the most exquisite, the most dignified people I have met during the five years I spent as Italy’s ambassador to Tehran. And the home that I visited more than once was certainly not a den of vice and debauchery,” he wrote.
“It is thanks to people like them that foreign diplomats posted in Iran have had the opportunity of gaining an appreciation of Iran’s culture, both traditional and contemporary, and of Iranian society.”
The ambassador directly refuted the authorities’ justification for detaining the couple: “One has to be truly gullible and the easy victim of propaganda in order to believe that they were detained because they were offering alcoholic drinks to their guests – especially in a capital where most of allegedly pious officials are notoriously not averse to drink.”
He wrote, “The reason must be a different one.… — political blackmail toward the US (of which they are also citizens), envy for their success, intimidation toward the Zoroastrian community, desire to grab their properties, repression of contemporary art (the reported destruction of works of art at their home would point in this direction).”
At the time of the couple’s arrest, agents went to their home and their gallery, confiscating works of art and destroying others, ICHRI reported.
Vafadari is a US citizen and his wife is a green card holder.
Ambassador Toscano added, “Politically, one can only interpret it as a provocation, not different from the detention and trial of Siamak and Baquer Namazi and of other dual nationals…. Much more is at stake than the personal freedom of two outstanding, patriotic Iranian citizens.”