Family of reporter held in Iran issue statement over judge

Jason Rezaian, a journalist imprisoned since July, will be tried by a hardline judge.

The Washington Post's Jason Rezaian. Reuters

NEW YORK // The family of the Washington Post's Tehran correspondent, who has been jailed in Iran since July, have issued a statement decrying a court decision to have a hardline judge who has been sanctioned by the EU for human rights abuses preside over the trial of the reporter and his wife.

Judge Abolghassem Salavati heads Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court — where political and national security trials are held — and in previous high-profile cases involving government critics, liberal protesters and minorities, has handed out harsh sentences including long prison terms, whippings and the death penalty.

“We find it very disturbing that the judiciary would select a judge to oversee the case who has been sanctioned by (and barred from entering) the European Union due to what it calls ‘gross human rights violations,’” the brother and mother of 38-year-old Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American dual citizen, said in the statement released on Sunday.

The charges against Mr Rezaian and his Iranian wife, The National reporter Yaganeh Salehi, have not been made public even to the accused. Mr Rezaian has also been denied access to an attorney. Security forces raided their home in July and arrested them along with two American photographers. Ms Salehi was freed on bail awaiting trial in October.

Iranian authorities have only said that Mr Rezaian’s alleged crimes involved activities beyond the realm of his work as a journalist. Until recently, Mr Rezaian, was kept in solitary confinement and is said to be in poor health.

“He will be tried soon,” Gholam Hossein Esmaili, the head of Tehran province’s justice department, said last week in a statement to Iranian state media.

In their statement, the Rezaian family voiced increasing anger over the continued detention and trial, saying, “Jason has dedicated the past decade of his life to informing the world of the true nature of Iran, the Iranian people, and their culture. In stark contrast, the Iranian government has spent the past six months displaying to the world a disregard for its own laws and the international human rights agreements that it has pledged to follow.”

The journalist’s arrest has embarrassed the government of elected president Hassan Rouhani, which has come under increasing pressure by Iranian hardliners, who control the judiciary, over its handling of talks with the US and other world powers over Iran’s nuclear programme.

US secretary of state John Kerry, has used the talks to raise the issue of Mr Rezaian’s arrest and asked Iranian officials to drop the charges against him.