Free Republic

Since his arrest last July -- he was accused of helping to plan the post-election uprisings -- Kian's family and friends have made countless appeals for clemency to the Iranian government, written letters to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pleading his innocence, and signed dozens of petitions. All to no avail. I've come now to realize that the regime probably thinks we're obtuse. Indeed, they know better than anyone that Kian is an innocent man. As the expression goes in Persian, "da'va sar-e een neest," i.e. that's not what this fight is about.

An Iranian-American scholar, Kian Tajbakhsh, is facing a new charge of spying. A judge read new charges against him of “spying for the George Soros foundation,” a reference to the Open Society Institute, a pro-democracy group founded by Mr. Soros, a prominent financier and philanthropist. He was sentenced in October to 15 years for working as a consultant for the Open Society Institute, which the indictment identified as an adjunct of the C.I.A. Tehran has accused the Open Society Institute of trying to stage a “velvet revolution” in Iran along the lines of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the...

TORONTO — When Kian Tajbakhsh went before a judge in Tehran on Sunday he had several reasons to think he would be released. Instead, to his utter shock, he was given a 15-year prison term. Since being detained in July, Mr. Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar, had been permitted two home visits, the last on Oct. 15, when he appeared hopeful that he would be released soon, a family member said. He said he had been transferred recently to a villa on the compound of the Evin prison, a sign of leniency that he thought suggested his release was imminent. Mr....

Authorities announced new arrests in the cases of two Iranian-Americans held on charges of conspiring against the government, saying Wednesday that an unspecified number of Iranians had been detained. State radio quoted Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Ejehei as saying that: "Internal elements related to these people have been arrested." Ejehei did not say how many people were arrested or give details on their purported connections to Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh. "We are hopeful their names and reasons of detention will be announced," he said. The Intelligence Ministry has alleged that Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh were seeking to set up networks...

Iran: The Conspiracy that Wasn't July 20, 2007 The New York Post Amir Taheri . . . THOUGH IT DOES SEEM A FINE IDEA Esfandiari: Hardly a "foreign plotter." EVER since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran has been obsessed with conspiracy theories, especially "foreign plots" to topple it. This paranoia was demonstrated again Wednesday with the televised confessions of two U.S. citizens of Iranian origin arrested in Tehran and accused of working for the "Great Satan." To most Iranians who watched the sordid show, the two "enemies of Islam" seemed unlikely heroes of an international conspiracy....

U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari (top, right), a New York-based urban planning consultant and another Iranian-American have been "formally charged'' with endangering national security and espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. "Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners,'' spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. "She has been informed of the charges against her.'' Jamshidi did not say when the specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She has been held at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison...