Families of Imprisoned Dual Nationals: America Should Revoke Visas of Iranian Officials’ Children

Two informed sources close to families of Americans imprisoned in Iran told NBC network on Monday that these families have requested in a letter to Donald Trump’s administration to revoke the visas of children of high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic who are present in America.

These sources said that these families are awaiting action from the White House in this regard.

NBC says that currently four United States citizens and one person with American residency are imprisoned in Iran.

According to this report, the families of these prisoners have provided a list of children and relatives of high-ranking Islamic Republic officials, including the nephew of Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, to US government and lawmakers.

The son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of Iran for Women and Family Affairs, is currently a student and resident of California. Masoumeh Ebtekar was one of the figures involved in the hostage-taking of 52 American diplomats at the country’s embassy in 1979.

It is said that the daughter of Ali Larijani, speaker of parliament, is currently completing her residency at a hospital in Ohio.

According to this report, the nephew of Hassan Rouhani and the son of his former adviser Hossein Fereydoun are students in New York.

Friends and families of detained dual nationals in Iran say that the visa issue for children of Iranian officials should be used as leverage in this matter.

A State Department official who did not want to be named, in response to a question about using visa revocation for Iranian officials’ children, said: The United States is pursuing all options to end arbitrary detention of Americans and will continue to pressure Iran’s government until this issue is resolved.

This American State Department official declined to provide further explanation about his actions in this regard.

A number of American lawmakers, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Eliot Engel, support the request of families of imprisoned dual nationals to revoke visas of Iranian officials’ children.

In this regard, an official from Eliot Engel’s office, the Democratic representative from New York, who is expected to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the next Congress, said that he supports any action that leads to the release of detainees.

Xiao Wang, a Chinese-American researcher at Princeton University, has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment in Iran and is in prison.

Siamak Namazi, holding dual Iranian and American nationality, was arrested in the course of a trip to Tehran from September 2015. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in court on charges of “cooperation with the hostile US government.”

Mohammad Baquer Namazi was a former UNICEF official in Iran and governor of Khuzestan before the February 1979 Iranian Revolution. He was arrested in March 1994 while traveling to Iran to follow up on the situation of his grandson, Siamak Namazi. Baquer Namazi is currently on medical leave outside prison and is banned from leaving the country.

Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen who has permanent residency in America, is also imprisoned in Iran.

There is no precise information about the exact number of dual nationals imprisoned in Iran; however, Nazanin Zaghari, Abbas Edalat, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Imperial College London, and Kamal Foroughi are also three Iranian-British citizens imprisoned in Iran.

Previously, Karen Vafaei, an American citizen, along with her husband Afarin Niessari, was imprisoned in Iran.

Reuters reported last year that IRGC intelligence arrested at least 30 dual nationals between 2015 and 2017 on charges of “espionage.”

According to Reuters, 19 of these individuals held European nationalities.

Letter from Six Dual National Families

On the same day, six families of imprisoned dual nationals sent a letter to world leaders urging them to counter the longstanding habit of “state hostage-taking” in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This letter was signed by the families of Robert Levinson, a former US federal police officer, Nizar Zakka, Saeed Malekpour, a materials engineering graduate from Sharif University of Technology Tehran with Canadian residency, Kamran Ghaderi, an Iranian-Australian who has been imprisoned since 2016, Ahmad Reza Jalali, a imprisoned physician and researcher, and Siamak Namazi.

The authors of this letter emphasized that without international pressure, the Islamic Republic will not show willingness to end hostage-taking.

These families stressed that “world leaders must raise the political cost of human rights violations so high that Islamic Republic officials are forced to release our loved ones.”

Source: Radio Farda