Amnesty International Again Calls for Immediate Release of Kamran Qadri and Access to Medical Services

Amnesty International has issued a call urging immediate action for the release of Kamran Qadri, an Iranian-Austrian businessman imprisoned in Iran, while expressing concern about his health condition.

According to text published on Amnesty International’s website in the form of a letter to Iran’s head of the judiciary, the 55-year-old Kamran Qadri is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence.

The letter states that the sentence against Mr. Qadri was issued based on “confessions” obtained under torture, threats, and unjustly. This human rights organization, through this call, has asked the authorities of the Islamic Republic to overturn this conviction and release Mr. Qadri.

Through this call, Amnesty International has asked people and human rights activists around the world to respond to Kamran Qadri’s situation by writing letters to Ibrahim Raisi, Iran’s head of the judiciary, in their own words and inspired by this call, demanding the annulment of this political prisoner’s conviction, and requesting that Mr. Qadri be able to receive the specialized medical care he needs in an appropriate hospital outside of prison.

Kamran Qadri, an Iranian-Austrian businessman, was arrested on December 3, 2015, at Tehran’s International Airport by Ministry of Intelligence officers when he traveled to Iran to visit his family. In August 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of cooperating with countries allegedly “hostile to the Islamic Republic.”

After his arrest until March 2016, this political prisoner was not allowed to contact his family, and during the first seven months of detention, he was deprived of access to a lawyer. He was only allowed to meet with a lawyer two days before his trial.

According to Amnesty International’s report, Kamran Qadri stated that during interrogations he was told his mother and brother had been arrested, although this news was false and was merely a means to force him to confess.

Forced and violent confessions by Iranian security forces have been raised repeatedly before. The use of this confession-extraction method, which has been criticized many times by human rights organizations, continues to be practiced by the judiciary of the Islamic Republic. Some of these forced confessions of detainees, such as those of Maziar Bahari, Maziar Ebrahimi, Sepideh Ghilian, Ebrahim Bakshi, Saeed Malekpour, and dozens of others, have been broadcast on official Iranian television networks.

Currently, in addition to Kamran Qadri, several American and non-American citizens are imprisoned in Iran. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the Islamic Republic has released some dual-nationality citizens like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on furlough, but others like Kamran Qadri, Anoosheh Ansari, and Siamak Namazi remain imprisoned.

Iran has intensified the detention of foreign and dual-nationality citizens in recent years

The U.S. State Department has repeatedly condemned the arbitrary and despotic detention of American citizens and citizens of other countries, including dual-nationality Iranians, by the Islamic Republic regime, and has demanded their immediate and unconditional release.

Source: Voice of America