Language barrier keeps Chinese woman jailed for month in Iran
IranMania News
April 27th, 2004
TEHRAN, April 27 (AFP) - A 26-year-old Chinese woman has been languishing without trial in Tehran's notorious Evin prison for a month because Iran's judicial bureaucracy has failed to find a translator, a newspaper said Tuesday.
The government's Iran daily said the woman, identified only as a student travelling as a tourist, was detained at the capital's Mehrabad airport as she tried to leave the Islamic republic at the end of March.
She was allegedly carrying a fake passport, but could not speak any of the languages -- Farsi, Arabic, English, French, German or Russian -- that the Islamic republic's hardline judiciary is equipped to deal with.
"Even though a month has passed and we have pursued the case through the court, the police and welfare in Evin prison, unfortunately we have not yet got hold of an interpretor from the Chinese embassy or another translator," a judiciary official based at the airport told the paper.
The official blamed bureaucratic delays and the Iranian New Year holiday period, when most offices shut down for more than two weeks.
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