Iran jails American businessman and his dad for 10 years

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Siamak Namazi
Siamak Namazi
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s state-run judicial news agency is reporting that an Iranian-American businessman and his father have each been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The Mizan news agency on Tuesday reported the sentences for businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF representative who once served as governor of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province under the U.S.-backed shah.

Supporters of the Nazamis could not be immediately reached for comment.

The announcement comes after a video of Siamak Namazi was posted online Monday by Mizan.

According to a Daily Beast article last year, the Namazi family has played a key role in trying to bridge ties between the U.S. and Tehran.

Effie Namazi, Baquer’s wife, said in February that she and a family lawyer had been unable to get more information about his detention or see her husband, who suffers from “serious heart and other conditions” that require medication.

The family lived outside New York for a period after the Islamic Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah in 1979, though later returned to Iran, she said.

Siamak Namazi is thought to have been arrested in October 2015. His father was detained in February.

Siamak’s arrest was the first such action against an American national in Iran after the January prisoner swap between the two countries. The Namazis were not released as part of a January deal that freed detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-Americans in exchange for pardons or charges being dropped against seven Iranians.

That deal also saw the U.S. make a $400 million cash delivery to Iran.

The Tuesday report also says Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon, also received a 10-year prison sentence. His supporters had earlier told The Associated Press about the sentence, though the Mizan report was the first official Iranian report of it.

Analysts and family members of those detained in Iran have suggested Iran wants to negotiate another deal with the West to free those held. In September, Iran freed a retired Canadian-Iranian university professor amid negotiations to reopen embassies in the two nations.

Others with Western ties recently detained in Iran include Robin Shahini, an Iranian-American detained while visiting family who previously had made online comments criticizing Iran’s human rights record, and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in prison on allegations of planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while traveling with her young daughter. Still missing is former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission.

© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc

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20 responses to “Iran jails American businessman and his dad for 10 years”

  1. But because the paranoid psychos that run Iran think everyone is a spy. One of the worst dictator/police sates in the world, next to North Korea. A wonder why anyone would support these animal/mullah that have run Iran into the ground, Oh wait, all the supporters don’t live under the oppressive dictator, they live in mostly free countries.

    1. Do you ever think for yourself or do you just parrot what you’re fed?

      1. It is called making an opinion regarding the latest news. What is your opinion? Or would you rather just harass anyone that exposes Iran’s evil mullahs for what they are?
        Now kindly go fvck yourself, and/or offer a response to the news article. I am sure there is some way you, or Hind can disregard the entire topic and just blame it all on the zionists super power. Now go kiss some mullah azz and earn your pay.

        1. I find it paradoxical that you write just harass anyone and then follow with go fvk yourself and go kiss some mullah azz.

          You do not have an opinion. You parrot the one-sided narrative (latest news) you’re fed like the good, obedient sheep you are. I can care less what Iran and its mullahs do or do not. I find it ludicrous that the likes of you demonize an entire country based on the propaganda of another.

          You seem to have forgotten that Iran hosted 8 million Afghani and Iraqi refugees that resulted from Anglo-America’s wars in the region; 4 million of which are still in Iran.

          Have you ever asked yourself why the mainstream media never criticizes Saudi Arabia for funding and supporting al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra ad the rest of the filthy gang while labeling Iran as the ‘exporter of terrorism’? What about the US arming and supporting ISIS, why don’t you look into that? Read what former DIA Chief, US General Flynn has to say on that.

          1. Rudy1947 Avatar

            When did Iran accept those refugees?

          2. Iran only accepts Afghan refugees , and then they have to go fight in Syria to get in Iran.

          3. Rudy1947 Avatar

            Roger that.

          4. Fed data and processed blindly. Good automaton.

          5. Incorrect, Iran has accepted refugees from both Afghanistan and Iran.

          6. 80s and 90s.

          7. Everyone is already aware that Saudi-land is a shiit hole. The Iran supporters here seem to not be aware that Iran is a Islamic State controlled by a Ayatollah dictator/king that has executed more of its own people per capita than any other country in the world. Do you not find these facts disturbing, or is hanging someone for a crime against god (their opinions) somehow ok with you?
            Are you aware of the amount of people imprisoned in Iran or executed for having an opinion that runs counter to the mad mullahs?
            I wrote “go fvk yourself” because your main debate tactic if to divert any topic that is about any Iranian/Syria crimes.
            This is another and you are doing exactly as I said.

          8. Most spies are disguised as business men and humanitarian. If Iran arrested those two men, I would hope they have a reason. Otherwise, they should be released. Taken for granted.

            I understand that you don’t use much of your brain (after all, you did say that you ‘make your opinion based on the latest new’) but from time to time, you should try to be less of a bigot and see if you are able to resuscitate those dormant neurons to educate yourself on Iran: that Anglo-American governments replaced the secular, progressive Shah with the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

            I’d like to see some data/proof in regards to executed more of its own people per capita than any other country in the world. – I am waiting.

            I didn’t ask nor do I care why you wrote of fvck yourself. I pointed out at your hypocrisy for playing the victim (being harassed) while doing just that.

            Crime is crime – regardless it’s American, Syrian, Romanian or Iranian. I call it when it’s confirmed, not when the mainstream media says so. Critically thinking about the chaos in the ME and realizing that both Syria and Iran are being demonized because they are Anglo-American’s next target does not mean my ‘main debate tactic if to divert any topic that is about any Iranian/Syria crimes.’. But if you believe that I have shown such debating tactic, do show me. Do not lie until then.

          9. “I’d like to see some data/proof in regards to executed more of its own people per capita than any other country in the world. – I am waiting.”
            You do know what “per capita” means?
            Do your own homework next time. Your a big boy and I know you know what a search engine is for.
            http://www.ibtimes.com/us-execution-rate-pales-comparison-iran-china-316582
            http://rdfi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=447:iranian-regimeiran-ranks-2nd-in-world-executions&catid=38:youth-issues&Itemid=53
            https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2012/jun/12/iran-public-executions

          10. Where did you read me ask you what ‘per capita’ means?

          11. That’s because your comprehension level seems to be low. I was asking because this is common knowledge about Iran and how many of their own people they kill to maintain their religious dictatorship. You seemed to not understand how nasty the mullah government is.

          12. I only asked you for verifiable sources on what you advanced, not what ‘per capita’ means.

          13. Iran executions of the right number of people without risking riots after the executions.
            This balance method is perfect to maintain the mullahs dictatorship despite the executions.
            According to Amnesty, at least 676 judicial executions are known to have been carried out in 2011 globally. More than half of those took place in Iran, which executed at least 360 people. But reports about the regime’s campaign of secret and mass hangings of prisoners have made it impossible for Amnesty to publish the true figures in Iran, like in China.

    2. 5thDrawer Avatar

      Good thing none of the family babies showed up there too.
      A ‘Fiver’ might have been only an age consideration.

  2. The United States is Iran’s eternal enemy, the mullahs don’t allow any easing in relationship – on the contrary the take first best occasion they can in order to keep it this way, like now with the jailings of Iranian-American businessman and his father.

    Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi’s remarks came after the US State Department’s deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said that the two Iranian-American nationals who were sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of cooperating with the US had been “unjustly detained” in Iran, and called for their immediate release.
    “The Iranian nation and government don’t attach any importance to the US officials’ interfering comments and excessive demands, and their attempts to sow discord among the united Iranian nation have and will fail,” Qassemi said on Wednesday.

    Typical for Tehran to blasts Washington’s for ‘Interfering Remarks and attempts to sow discord among Iranians’.

    In fact Siamak Namazi, Baqer Namazi wasn’t the only ones to be sentenced for spying in Iran.
    4 others – Nazar Zaka, Farhad Abd Saleh, Kamran Qaderi and Alireza Omidvar have been too sentenced each to 10 years of jail for spying and cooperating with the US government against Iran.

    The human Iranian government are not as human as they put forward, that why Afghan refugees leaving Iran.
    In Iran, many Afghan refugees are forced to exist off the grid and say they lack basic human rights.
    For exempel Jawad, 31, and Masoomi, 26, were both born in Iran to Afghan parents who had been driven from their country during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.
    Asked why he left Iran, Jawad replies: “How do I explain 31 years of problems?”

    Iran hosts some three million Afghan refugees, many of whom have poured into the country since the United States-led invasion in 2001.
    However, only an estimated 950,000 are United Nations-registered, as Iranian authorities have not provided all Afghan refugees with an opportunity to legally claim asylum.

    Those born in the country are afforded UN-recognised refugee status, but they hold only a fraction of the rights granted to Iranian citizens. Many live without residency documents and are forced to exist off the grid, making their living from the black market.

    “For Afghans, there is no chance for a future in Iran,” Jawad says. “For the Iranian government, it wasn’t enough that we are Muslims like them. I had to pay bribes to work, and the police were always harassing me.”

    “We were both born in Iran, but neither of us has documents,” his wife Masoomi explains. “We don’t want our children to face the same problems and racist treatment.” (Al Jazeera)

    And that isn’t all, Afghan refugees in Iran being sent to fight and die for Assad in Syria!

    1. The CIA helped bring the Ayatollah Khomeini in power after removing the Shah in the 70s. They’re perfectly happy with the mullahs, don’t get fooled. The last part is rhetorical since you’re aim is to spread propaganda only.

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