Government officials emphasize the innocence of environmental activists arrested by the judiciary
Two members of Hassan Rouhani's government have announced that the detained environmental activists were not engaged in espionage activities and should be released.
According to Iranian domestic news agencies, Issa Kalantari, Vice President and Head of the Environmental Protection Organization, announced on Tuesday, June 1, at a conference on International Biodiversity Day that there is no evidence to support the allegations made against these individuals.
Stating that the Ministry of Intelligence has also concluded that there is no evidence that the detained environmental activists were spying, he said that they should be released soon.
He also said, "The government has assigned a four-member group of ministers to follow up on those detained for environmental reasons. In my opinion, unfortunately, they have been detained without doing anything. These friends have also reached the same conclusion."
Earlier, Tehran MP Mahmoud Sadeghi also pointed to the Ministry of Intelligence's responsibility in identifying espionage cases in the country and said that experts from the Ministry of Intelligence had stated that the arrested environmental activists were not spies.
In January of last year, Kavoos Seyed Emami, along with nine other environmental activists and experts, were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards. Shortly after, prison officials informed Mr. Seyed Emami's family that he had committed suicide in prison.
His death sparked widespread reactions in Canada and the United States, and some human rights organizations criticized the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic's judiciary announced the arrests as "espionage." The Islamic Republic's state-run broadcaster claimed in a report that Mr. Seyed Emami, a university professor and director of the Persian Heritage Wildlife Foundation, and his colleagues used cheetah cameras to photograph IRGC missile sites and provided information about these sites to foreign intelligence agencies.
The head of the Environmental Protection Organization, however, denied the accusation, saying that these cameras were capable of recording a limited area around them. A short while later, the lawyer for a number of the detainees announced that one of the pieces of evidence against Mr. Seyed Emami was a fishing hook that they used to place a radio on when traveling to remote and mountainous areas to listen to music and news.
Simultaneously with Issa Kalantari's statements about the innocence of the arrested environmental activists, reports indicate that after about 118 days of detention, some of them have been allowed to meet with their families for 10 minutes.
Morteza Arianjad, Niloufar Bayani, Hooman Jokar, Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Hassan Ragh, Sam Rajabi, Aref Zare, Alireza Farhadzadeh, Taher Ghadirian, Abdolreza Koohpayeh, and Hamideh Kashani Doost are environmental activists and experts who have been arrested.
Some of these individuals have a long history of environmental protection activities and cooperation with the government in preserving Iranian wildlife species.
In addition to these individuals, a number of other environmental activists have been arrested in various regions of Iran in recent months, especially in the provinces of Hormozgan and Bushehr. Some reports have put the number of arrested environmental activists at more than 50.
Source: Voice of America
