Tehran Court Slams a 9-Year Jail Sentence on UK-Iranian Anthropologist For 'Subversive' Research

A court in Iran has handed a nine-year jail sentence to British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, after convicting him of conducting “subversive” research work, the semi-official news agency Tasnim said on Sunday.

Ahmady was also fined 600,000 euros ($727,000) – the sum Iranian authorities said he received for his research from institutions accused of seeking to topple Iran’s Islamic government, Tasnim reported.

There was no immediate official comment on the sentence, which was also reported by other Iranian news agencies and human rights groups, as well as by Ahmady’s lawyer, who said that he would appeal.

“Ahmady was accused of acquiring illicit property from his cooperation in implementing subversive institutions’ projects in the country,” Tasnim said.

The news agency added Ahmady was sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of cooperation with European embassies in support of promoting homosexuality, visiting Israel as a reporter for the BBC, cooperation and communication with foreign and hostile media, infiltration aimed at changing the law and sending false reports about the country to the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.

Ahmady has the right to appeal within 20 days, Tasnim’s report said.

In October 2019, Iran acknowledged Ahmady’s arrest for suspected links to institutes affiliated with foreign intelligence services.

His wife Shafagh Rahmani and activists had announced he was detained in August that same year.

Sensitive topics

At the time, the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran said Ahmady previously had been the target of hard-liners in Iranian media for his work “on politically sensitive topics including child marriage, LGBTQ issues and female genital mutilation.”

He was released in November 2019 on bail. Sunday’s report did not say if he was still free.

Ahmady’s lawyer, Amir Raesian, said his client had received an eight-year sentence for “collaborating with a hostile government.”

“We will present an appeal request against this ruling and we are still hopeful,” Raesian said on Twitter.

The reason for the apparent discrepancy about the length of Ahmady’s sentence was not immediately clear.

After Ahmady’s arrest, his wife told the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran that his work was independent and published with government approval.

Bargaining chips

Ahmady is one of several dual nationals who’ve been detained by Iran over the past few years. Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

Rights activists have accused Iran of arresting dozens of dual nationals to try to win concessions from other countries – a charge that the Islamic Republic has regularly dismissed.

Iran holds another British-Iranian national, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has already served most of her five-year sentence on espionage charges. She was granted temporary release this spring and allowed to remain indefinitely at her parents’ Tehran home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, was tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

Their cases come amid heightened tensions between Iran and the West over its atomic programme.

US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear accord last year and imposed sanctions, crippling Iran’s economy.

Iran recently has begun inching away from the accord, warning it will take further steps if Europe cannot guarantee Tehran the ability to sell its crude oil on the global market.

This article has been adapted from its original source.