Wife of Ganji Goes Public in Asking Iranian Judiciary: Where Is My Husband?

Eli Lake, The NY Sun:

The wife of Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji went public this weekend with a letter to the head of her country's judiciary, asking the whereabouts of her husband, whom she has not seen since August 26.

"The last time that I met my sick imprisoned husband was on Friday Aug. 26, 2005," Massoumeh Shafieh wrote to judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. "Since then I do not have any news from him, the worried and questioning eyes of my daughter and the heartbroken mother of my husband is agonizing me. Although I have gone through all legal channels, still I can't lay rest. The best time of my life and of my children has been spent in separation, worry, tears, sighs, pray, and anticipation." READ MORE

Akbar Ganji nearly starved himself to death this summer on hunger strike demanding his unconditional release after being sent to jail in June for urging his countrymen to boycott the June 24 presidential election that resulted in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gaining the presidency. He was originally sentenced in 2001 for publishing a book and articles pinning a string of murders in the late 1990s on leaders of the regime.

His hunger strike attracted solidarity from President Bush, leaders of the European Union, and other famous political prisoners such as Natan Sharansky and Vaclav Havel. While in prison, Mr. Ganji broke a long-standing taboo among other Iranian reformers by publicly urging the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to resign.

Ms. Shafieh earlier this month said that her husband ended his hunger strike after he was told he would be released. She has since said that the Iranian authorities have reneged on the deal.

A September 20 statement from Reporters Without Borders said that they believed Mr. Ganji was being kept in solitary confinement.

"Ganji seems to have been placed in total solitary confinement in a special section of Evin (prison) to which only the Revolutionary Guards have access," the organization's release said. "Shutting him away like this is a flagrant violation of Iranian law, which explicitly says detainees may receive visits from their relatives and lawyers. The sole aim of the prison authorities seems to be to break Ganji completely."

The worsening treatment of Mr. Ganji comes as Iran grows more defiant of the West in its negotiations over its nuclear program. On Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted 22-1 to send Iran's "many failures and breaches of its obligations" under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to the United Nations Security Council. The new resolution, however, does not specify when the Security Council, which can impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic, should take up the matter. China and Russia abstained from the vote, and Venezuela, which has just forged a series of development deals with Iran, voted against the referral.

"The resolution is unacceptable and illegal. The Europeans even failed to get a consensus on it," the spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, Hamid-Reza Asefi, said yesterday via Iran's official news agency.

"It is very unusual for the International Atomic Energy Agency to vote on a decision, so the adoption by vote this time showed that there is no consensus against Iran's peaceful nuclear program," Mr. Asefi said.