The Syrian government said she was stopped from entering Syria because she presented an expired Iranian passport. But Parvaz said the passport was up-to-date—just incorrectly filled out by the Iranian authorities.
She said her arrest was prompted by a discrepancy in the Gregorian and Persian dates in her Iranian passport. The Persian date shows it is still valid, but an erroneous Gregorian date implied it was out-of-date.
While the discrepancy was quickly resolved, the visa in her American passport, indicating she worked for Al-Jazeera, and the satellite phone and Internet hub in her luggage raised suspicions leading to her incarceration in Syria for three days before she was sent to Iran, where she was held almost three weeks.
Her experience in a detention center in Iran was tolerable, far better than in Syria. Parvaz says she understands Iran had to examine Syria’s assertion of her being a spy. She recalls, “My interrogator [in Iran] was effective. This was not a picnic, it was not fun.”
Other guards, however, were kind, she told The Vancouver Sun. They worried about getting her the right foods for her vegetarian diet as she was losing weight, and she was even sent back home with three boxes of gaz, the Persian candy.
Parvaz, 39, says she will rest for a couple weeks in her Vancouver home with her parents before resuming her work for Al-Jazeera in the Middle East.