September 21, 2018
Art gallery owner Afarin Neyssari and her husband, Iranian-American businessman Karan Vafadari, have been released on bail from Tehran’s Evin Prison after two years in detention.
The Art Newspaper has been told that the couple had to pay a bail of around 400 billion rials, an astounding sum worth about $5 million at the time they paid it.
The couple remains in Tehran awaiting a decision on their appeal. News of their temporary release July 21 emerged in social media postings, but the family has so far declined to comment.
The couple, who own the Aun Gallery in Tehran, was arrested by the Pasdaran in July 2016. In January of this year, the couple was sentenced to draconian jail terms of 16 years for Neyssari, and 27 years for Vafadari on charges that included “assembly and collusion against national security,” “spreading corruption,” “storing alcoholic drinks” and “dealing in indecent art.”
Both Vafadari and Neyssari are Zoroastrians so the regime alcohol ban does not apply to them.
Vafadari is one of a string of dual nationals to be incarcerated by Iran; his wife holds a US green card.
In a letter written from prison earlier this year, Vafadari wrote that at the time of his arrest, he was attempting to claim back land confiscated from his family during the 1979 revolution, “when more than half of our agricultural lands were confiscated in the name of khoms [an Islamic tax] and more assets were taken away from us for different reasons,” he wrote.
The case has shocked the Iranian and international art community, and 15,000 people have signed an online petition for the pair’s release.
The Aun Gallery’s artists include the Italian-based Iranian artist Bijan Basari, who went on to represent Iran at the 2017 Venice Biennale, after the couple was arrested
Salman Matinfar, the founding director of the Tehran gallery Ab-Anbar, posted on Instagram: “Many Iranians with dual nationalities have returned to Iran to start a business to contribute to their motherland for a brighter future. What happened to this couple gives many of these contributors cold feet.”