Jason Rezaian Seeks $1 Billion in Damages from Iran

A former Washington Post reporter in Iran said at the first hearing of his lawsuit that interrogators explicitly told him during his detention that they were using him as leverage. Jason Rezaian was imprisoned for a year and a half.

Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter, appeared in a federal court on Tuesday, December 18 (January 8) and said the Iranian government used his arrest and 18-month imprisonment as leverage in nuclear negotiations with the West.

According to the Associated Press, Rezaian told the court that his interrogators, during his detention, subjected him to severe psychological pressure to force him to confess to espionage.

Rezaian also testified that his interrogators explicitly admitted they were using him for political bargaining and would release him from prison when “the Americans give them what they want.”

Rezaian, 43, was born in America to an American mother and Iranian father and holds dual citizenship. He worked as a Washington Post reporter at the newspaper’s Tehran bureau before his detention.

Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, were detained by security forces in their home in the summer of 2014. Yeganeh Salehi was released on bail two months later, but his wife was imprisoned for a year and a half on charges of “espionage and actions against national security.”

Jason Rezaian was released on January 16, 2016, coinciding with the presence of Iran and U.S. foreign ministers in Vienna to read the executive statement on the implementation of the JCPOA. At that time, several other Iranian-American prisoners were also released from prison during a group exchange of Iranian-descent prisoners in America.

Damages Claim

Jason Rezaian and his family are seeking $1 billion in damages from the Iranian government in their lawsuit.

According to the Associated Press, Rezaian told the court that during his imprisonment he was regularly interrogated and subjected to psychological torture and threatened with execution. Rezaian stated that the evidence presented against him during interrogation and trial was essentially composed of articles he wrote for the Washington Post or interviews he conducted with government officials and civil activists.

Rezaian said that the first time he met with his case judge, the judge said he would sentence him to death.

He added that during interrogations he confessed to espionage, but during his trial in court he explicitly emphasized that these confessions were extracted from him under severe psychological torture.

After his release from prison, Jason Rezaian returned to America and now lives in Washington with his wife and works for the Washington Post.

He told the federal court judge that he still suffers from psychological stress and anxiety resulting from his interrogation and imprisonment in Iran. Rezaian said: “My condition has improved compared to when I was released from prison, but I am still not the person I was before my arrest.”

The Iranian government has not formally or publicly responded to Jason Rezaian’s complaint to date. During the court hearing on Tuesday, no lawyer or representative from the Iranian government was present.

Source: DW