Ares Amiri: Ten Years Prison for Rejecting Intelligence Cooperation Proposal

A Kingston University student who has been accused of “spying” for Britain by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has written a letter to the head of the judiciary, stating that after explicitly rejecting a request from security agencies for cooperation, she was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Ares Amiri Larijanani, a postgraduate philosophy of art student at Kingston University in Britain who has been sentenced to ten years in prison, has written a detailed letter to Ibrahim Raisi requesting investigation into how her case was formed and demanding restoration of her rights.

Ms. Amiri was arrested on March 14, 2018, when she traveled to Iran to visit her family, on charges of “acting against national security,” and was temporarily released on June 18, 2018, on a bail of 500 million tomans. She was arrested again on September 9, 2018, and on May 18, 2019, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Ares Amiri writes that Ministry of Intelligence agents arrested her on March 14, 2018, on the street and interrogated her at the Esteghlal Hotel, but her second arrest involved a direct transfer from the prosecutor’s office to the general ward of Evin Prison.

In her letter, Ares Amiri states: “After my release on 500 million toman bail in June 2018, the case investigators contacted me. In my third meeting with them, I explicitly rejected their request for cooperation and stated that I could only work in my own specialized field and officially, and do nothing else. Shortly after the last meeting with the case specialists, Mr. Ghanaat-kar, the case prosecutor (Branch 1 of the 33rd District Prosecutor’s Office in Tehran), summoned me, and in the third session, they informed me of the charge under Article 498 of the Islamic Penal Code regarding organization and management of a system-overthrowing network. With the justification that there was a possibility of me fleeing the country, they increased the bail and directly transferred me from the first branch of the Evin Prosecutor’s Office to the general ward of Evin Prison.”

Announcement of Verdict on State Television

The announcement of Ms. Amiri’s verdict was made by the judiciary’s spokesperson on television. Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, without naming Ares Amiri, called her the “head of Iran’s desk at the British Council and collaborator with this country’s intelligence service” and “the agent planning cultural infiltration projects.”

Ares Amiri complained in her letter to Ibrahim Raisi that instead of hearing her sentence from her lawyer or in court, she heard it on television from the mouth of the judiciary’s spokesperson, with the charge changed from the original to “espionage.”

Ares Amiri writes that after six years of studying in England, she applied for the position of Iran’s cultural affairs officer at the “British Council” through a job advertisement and was an ordinary employee at this institution. She recalled that this council had an official office in Iran until 2008, yet the reason for her arrest was attributed to her work at this council.

Ms. Amiri stated that her defense arguments were never heard; that she only holds Iranian citizenship, had no access to classified or confidential information, and merely had ideas for cultural programs that were never implemented: “The country’s judicial system must clarify which group, organization or entity my crime is based on founding or managing according to this article? The British Council or the Iran section of the British Council?”

Objection to the Verdict

Ares Amiri explained that the British Council is a one-hundred-percent state institution established 85 years ago, and its Iran section has existed for 77 years: “It is now unclear on what grounds, logic, and legal reasoning I am introduced as the founder or manager of an institution that was active more than 50 years before my birth, and how my activities at this British state institution constitute a crime under Article 498 of the Islamic Penal Code? While I was merely an ordinary employee in the Iran section of the British Council and no one worked under my organizational chart, to the extent that there would even be a possibility of managing a two-person group!”

The “British Council” had a presence in Iran until 2009, but after Iran’s security agencies created difficulties for its employees, it ended its activities in Tehran.

Ares Amiri has also rejected the charge of using a pseudonym and explained that she only used her mother’s surname (Khatami) based on a request from the director of the Iran section of the British Council, but her legal passport is under the name Ares Amiri Larijanani, and all artists and officials from the Ministry of Culture know her by the name Ares Amiri.

Ares Amiri’s letter to the head of the judiciary has been made public a month after it was written and sent. Ms. Amiri asked Ibrahim Raisi to investigate and pursue illegal actions and insults directed at herself and her family.

Source: DW