The case is thus taking on the appearance of the 2003 death of another dual national named Zahra—Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died from injuries sustained while being interrogated in Evin prison.
The Dutch earlier “froze” diplomatic relations with Iran. That means Iranian diplomats need to obtain permission from the Dutch government before they can meet with any Dutch government official.
The Netherlands has also summoned its ambassador home for consultations, another diplomatic procedure intended to show displeasure with a foreign government. The Foreign Ministry said the summons was prompted by the Iranian government’s refusal to give the body to the family. “We were taken aback by the manner in which Mrs. Bahrami’s remains were treated, and we want to protest the lack of respect shown to her family,” spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told Agence France Presse.
He said the Iranian ambassador in The Hague was also called in to hear the protest.
Bahrami’s family says she was arrested in 2009 after participating in one of the post-election protests. It says drug smuggling charges were later added.
The Islamic Republic denies that and says she was in fact arrested for drug smuggling, drug selling and drug possession. Iran says she was part of a major drug organization bringing cocaine into Iran.
The Iranian media have carried reports saying Bahrami was convicted in the Netherlands in 2003 of smuggling 16 kilos of cocaine from the Caribbean into the Netherlands and in 2007 for forging a passport. The Iran Times has asked the Dutch government if those reports are true, but has not yet received a response.
Bahrami, 46, was hanged January 29 at Evin prison, according to the Iranian government. But the Dutch said it had enquired about the case and been informed January 28 that it was still proceeding through the Judiciary with no immediate action anticipated. That has added fuel to the speculation that she was not hanged as announced.
However, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said Bahrami’s daughter had seen her mother two days before the announced hanging and that there was no indication at that time of any abuse or torture.
“What happened between that moment and the moment of ‘execution’ we do not know,” Rosenthal told parliament last Thursday. “We have not found that out. We support the family at every level in their effort to obtain the body either to bury her there or get it repatriated.” Three days later, Iranian officials said the body would not be tuned over to the family and had been buried in Semnan.
Rosenthal acknowledged the widespread speculation that Bahrami had died from torture and that the “hanging” was a fabrication, but he said the Netherlands had no firm evidence of that and noted that bloggers and reporters writing about the case also had no evidence her cause of death.
In the earlier case, Canada support the other Zahra’s family in its efforts to have the body sent to Montreal. But Iran also refused then and had the body buried in Shiraz.
The Bahrami case has taken Dutch-Iranian relations to a new low. It almost replicates the decline in Iranian-Canadian relations after the other Zahra’s death in 2003.
Dutch parliamentarians are incensed and have repeatedly expressed outrage at the treatment meted out to Bahrami.
The political setting for the Bahrami case is, however, very different than for the Canadian case. The Dutch government is a minority government that stays in office only with the support in parliament of the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, one of Europe’s most outspoken figures warning of a threat from Islam. The Freedom party has flogged the Bahrami case and accused Foreign Minister Rosenthal of failing to take strong action such as expelling Iran’s ambassador. The cabinet is thus under real pressure within parliament as well as from the media to be firm with Iran.
The Islamic Republic has taken great offense to the Dutch position and responded with harsh criticisms of the Dutch, calling the Netherlands uncivilized and telling it over and over that it has no business even inquiring about Bahrami. Iran does not recognize dual nationality and considers Bahrami to be Iranian and only Iranian.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said Tuesday, “Regarding irresponsible remarks by certain Dutch officials, I should mention that it is really regrettable that those countries that claim to be advocates of human rights and seek to portray themselves as civilized support drug trafficking.”
He charged that the Netherlands was “making a human rights issue out of the case and is seeking to apply political pressure on the Islamic Republic.
Mehman-Parast said, “We think that the path taken by Western countries is a dead-end.”
He said Bahrami was not only caught red-handed smuggling drugs into Iran but had also been convicted on similar charges in the Netherlands.
Mehman-Parast then accused the Netherlands of supporting terrorism. He asserted that the Dutch government was “supporting terrorist groups that have more than 12,000 killings on their record.”
The Iranian Judiciary, in announcing Bahrami’s hanging, said she was a member of an anti-government terrorist group, which many assumed to be a reference to the Mojahedin-e Khalq. Subsequently, however, the Judiciary has said she was a member of the Royalist Association of Iran, a monarchist group not associated with the Pahlavi family.
It wasn’t known where Mehman-Parast got his reference to the group having 12,000 killings of its record. The monarchist group has been held responsible for a bombing at a Shiraz mosque a few years ago in which 14 people died.
In The Hague, the state broadcaster, Radio Netherlands, last Friday inaugurated a Farsi Internet service, www.rnw.nl/farsi, for social media and mobile phone use. Radio Netherlands said this service is being operated experimentally for one month, after which it will be decided whether to continue it. The website was clearly a response to the Bahrami case.
In Washington, the US State Department issued a statement last week protesting the ongoing rash of executions in general and of Bahrami in particular. “Iran continues to deny its citizens their human rights,” the statement said.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said that 83 people were executed in Iran in the month of January.