February 15, 2019
After 10 days of detention in the United States, PressTV’s Marzieh Hashemi was released from custody and allowed to go home. She stayed another week in the United States and complained that she had been “kidnaped” by the US government.
Hashemi, who was born in New Orleans as Melanie Frank-lin 59 years ago, spoke bitterly about her detention and slammed the United States for detaining her. She said it was illegal to arrest someone without charges—although that is done all the time in the Islamic Republic.
The US District Court in Washington, DC, confirmed her detention as a “material witness” in a grand jury investigation and also confirmed that she was not a wanted person and was never charged with any crime. US law allows for the detention of witnesses if there is concern that they might flee the country.
But Hashemi insisted she had been arrested as a “warning” to her, and also because she was black and Muslim. She told The Associated Press the grand jury had not questioned her about terrorism. She made three appearances before the grand jury.
According to the AP, a US Justice Department report in 2012 showed that from 2000 through 2012, a total of 112 people were detained as material witnesses, an average of 8-1/2 per year. They were held an average of 26 days each, 2-1/2 times longer than Hashemi.
The Islamic Republic pulled out all the stops to publicize her case and use it as an example of how the United States opposes freedom of expression. Officials also said her arrest was proof that Americans were biased against women and blacks.
While trials are public in the United States, grand jury hearings are held behind closed doors as part of the centuries-old English legal system. Grand juries hold investigations and determine if there is enough evidence to warrant an indictment and public trial. That is why grand jury proceedings are closed.
There was, therefore, no announcement about the investigation for which Hashemi was called to testify. She also adhered to the admonishment that the grand jury hearings are private and that she should not discuss her testimony in public.
Three of Hashemi’s children, all of whom live in the United States, were subpoenaed by the grand jury but not arrested. Only one actually testified, according to news reports.
In her first comments after her arrest, she told her family she was barred from wearing a headscarf and not given religiously appropriate food in prison. However, on her release, she said that had changed after a few days. The US prison system has religiously based meals for Jewish and Muslim prisoners.
The Iranian media said that the mainstream media in the United States suppressed news about Hashemi’s case. And it was true that her case did not become a big issue discussed at length on social media or television. However, the news was hardly suppressed. The Washington Post carried four stories on the case, January 18, 23, 24 and 25. The New York Times also carried four stories: January 16, 18, 22 and 23.
At least one report in Iran said after her release that the US government had folded “under the weight of public opinion.” But there was no sign of any such weight. Protests sponsored on Hashemi’s behalf drew only small numbers of people. Although Iran painted the arrest of a material witness as a violation of all standards of human rights, the procedure had been used for centuries.
Hashemi’s detention was approved by the chief US district court judge in Washington, DC, Beryl A. Howell, on the basis that she was a “flight risk” because she lived abroad. Three of her children were also subpoenaed, but were not detained because they live in the United States.
At a news conference she held January 25, Hashemi said her case was “related to where I live and to what I do.”
Reuters said it was told the grand jury that called her was examining whether PressTV, which is the English language arm of Iranian state broadcasting, may have violated requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act that anyone advocating in the United States on behalf of a foreign government or political party must register with the US Justice Department.
Hashemi declined to say if that was what she was questioned about. She also said she could not address whether investigators were looking into other Iran-related matters, such as a sanctions-violation case or alleged crimes by an individual.
Those called before grand juries are all told not to discuss what they were asked or said before the grand jury because all such hearings are closed under US law. So, she clearly was willing to adhere to that legal requirement and did not object to it.
Hashemi, appearing with demonstrators outside the federal court house in Washington protesting her arrest, said journalists for foreign state-run media should take heed of what she called an attempt by the American government to intimidate an outlet presenting opposing views.
“Make no mistake. They can call it whatever they want to call it, but I was kidnapped,” Hashemi said. PressTV earlier used the term “abduction” to describe her arrest.
Hashemi spoke before about 80 protesters, including members of CodePink, Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and local African-American Muslim advocates.
Hashemi linked her arrest to her broadcasts about racial and anti-Islamic bias in American society, saying: “We will not be intimidated. We will not back off the truth, no matter the price.” But broadcast and written articles condemning anti-black and anti-Islam biases in the United States are hardly uncommon.
The day before, she gave an interview to PressTV in which she said she had often been “harassed” during her annual visits to her family in the US, but her arrest this time took the harassment to a “whole new level.”
She said, “In general, when I travel throughout the United States and [take] domestic flights,… I always have to be at the airports three to three-and-a-half hours prior to flight just to make it through all obstacles.”
Hashemi said she was with her son, Reza, when the FBI arrested her at the St. Louis airport and put her in handcuffs on January 13 before boarding a flight to Denver. She spent the night at St. Louis airport before being transferred to the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, DC, the next day.
There, FBI agents kept telling Hashemi she was not being charged while they took her fingerprints. “Then, they said they had to get my DNA,” Hashemi said, adding the agents performed a DNA swab on her against her will.
She was then moved to Washington’s central jail and then to another detention facility, where she was “strip searched.”
“Our viewers know me, I am … a practicing Muslim and I do adhere to hejab,” she said. “So for me, a scarf is even important to wear in front of males and I was subjected to a strip search and I was not allowed to put my scarf on for the mug shot.”
Hashemi was taken to the court after spending a night in the facility’s “unbelievable conditions,” where she was incarcerated in solitary confinement next to other people from different nationalities that the FBI had detained for unknown reasons, PressTV reported. It wasn’t explained how she was confined next to other people if she was in solitary confinement.
To get to the courtroom, she said she was forced to climb the stairs while in shackles because of the malfunctioning elevators that authorities had been unable to repair due to the ongoing government shutdown.
“The overall treatment … was one of sheer disrespect, disregard and no one should be treated like this,” she said.
“Yes, I live in Iran, I work in Iran right now, but I do come back and forth into the United States, it is my home and I have the right to come back here whenever I want,” she said The FBI and the courts have not said otherwise.
At one point, Hashemi said, there were guards sitting outside her cell that inmates later said had her under a “suicide watch.”
“When I heard that … [I said] I know that I’m not going to kill myself, so there could be something else up here,” she said.
That’s when she asked one of the prisoners who was getting out to inform her daughter that “if anything happens to me she knows it’s not from suicide.”
Hashemi said she was “humbled” by global calls to free her, but the mission was far from accomplished as many others could face the same ordeal as long as the US justice system remained the same.
“I’ve always been a person to say what I believe, and to be a firm believer in trying to fight for what is right and what is true and very much against oppression,” Hashemi said. “So, people like me always pay a price.”
“What happened to me could happen to anyone, and it’s not about me, Marzieh Hashemi,” she added.
Hashemi doubled down on the need to change once and for all detention laws used as a “fear tactic” by US authorities to incarcerate innocent people without any charges as long as they please.
“I don’t believe that a majority of American people and people around the world believe that this should be allowed in a country that says it believes in human rights,” she added. “So I am calling and asking people to stand in solidarity and condemn these types of acts.”
“It is with fear that powers-that-be try to control those who believe in freedom. But ultimately, it’s the people united who can make changes and I’m asking to demand an end to this oppression that is taking place in the US judicial system,” Hashemi said.
“They came for me last week; tomorrow who are they going to go to? Who are they going to pick up? When are you going to say enough is enough? And I have to stand up for what is right no matter the cost,” she said.
While she was detained, the Iranian media featured her case as one of the major news stories. Iranian officials made a point of appearing on camera to denounce the Americans. The consistent theme was that she was arrested because she was black and a Muslim.
On her return to the Iran, she was greeted at the airport by about 100 people cheering her. She told them she feared she would be detained when she tried to fly out of Denver for Frankfurt. “I was not comfortable as long as I was over US airspace, “ she said. “I was thinking they can reroute the plane and bring it down in Washington. It sounds like a movie, but I lived through that movie, so I know that anything is possible.” Despite her fear of re-arrest, she had stayed in the United States for a full week after her release.
She complained that American Muslims and blacks had failed to mount strong opposition to the law allowing the arrest of material witnesses, portraying it as something passed after the 9/11 attacks. Actually, the provision on arresting material witnesses is contained in the law on the Judiciary approved in 1789 by the very first Congress elected after the Constitution was approved.
She said, “The American media coverage of my detention in the West was highly politicized and was trying to frame me. It is a fact that Western media outlets have an anti-Iran agenda that is always beating its drum towards war.”
The chief of Iran’s Judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, said, “They claim that this journalist has been detained as a ‘witness.’ This is the first time that I hear a country detains its own national who is only a witness—in her own homeland without there being any fear about her possible flight from the country.” He said the US problem with Hashemi was that she defended the Islamic Revolution in Iran and criticized the United States crimes around the world.”
The day after Hashemi was freed, a court in Tehran found a journalist, Yashar Soltan, guilty of false reporting and insulting religious sanctities and sentenced him to five years.
Hashemi became fascinated with the Islamic revolution in Iran when she was in college majoring in journalism. She married an Iranian attending college with her and moved to Iran. She has worked for PressTV as an anchor and interviewer for about 25 years. Her husband is now deceased.
