[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 87 (Friday, May 25, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    SUPPORT FOR DR. HALEH ESFANDIERI

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 24, 2007

  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Madam Speaker, on December 30,2006, Dr. Haleh 
Esfandieri, a prominent Iranian-American scholar, was in Iran to visit 
her sick 93-year-old mother when she was stopped by the Iranian 
authorities.
  What followed was nearly 5 months of a series of intense 
interrogations and pressure tactics where she was harassed, threatened, 
and forced to make false statements against her employer, the Woodrow 
Wilson Center for International Scholars. On May 8, she was again 
detained and imprisoned.
  Her arrest and detention has angered analysts, human rights groups 
and lawmakers throughout the world. Yet still, the Iranian regime 
refuses to release her, claiming she is a spy who was plotting to 
overthrow the Iranian government.
  I would like to submit a statement issued from the Woodrow Wilson 
Center for International Scholars on May 21, 2007 for the record.
  Madam Speaker, these charges are a farce. Professor Esfandieri is an 
accomplished scholar of Persian literature, language and history who 
taught at Princeton University before becoming the Director of the 
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars Middle East Program. 
Her husband, Mr. Shaul Bakhash, is a professor at George Mason 
University of Fairfax, VA. The Woodrow Wilson Center is a non-profit, 
non-partisan organization whose work is to research and foster dialogue 
within the scholarly world on current and future public policy issues.
  Dr. Esfandieri's tireless dedication to teaching and advocating on 
behalf of Iran is clear. She has focused on building bridges and 
opening doors for peace in the Middle East. She has sought to 
facilitate and strengthen Iranian-American relations through numerous 
seminars, lectures and workshops with educators, policymakers and 
groups from both countries and has pressed wider freedoms to 
communicate about our common bonds and negotiate over our 
disagreements.
  Like thousands of other Iranians living abroad, Professor Esfandieri 
is an academic who took a personal trip to see her family. If she as 
one individual scholar threatens this regime so much that they have to 
interrogate her for almost five months and detain her in a notorious 
prison cell known for human rights abuses, then one has to assume this 
regime is desperate to retain whatever control it can.
  Today, the Iranian leadership's lack of courage and conscience is as 
clear as it is disappointing.
  It is evident that this regime is criminalizing scholarly work of any 
kind, despite the fact that Iran's very own history is filled with 
centuries of scholarly research and discovery. This regime's egregious 
decision to imprison Dr. Esfandieri reflects a deepening departure from 
the values and ideals the Iranian people have historically prided 
themselves on.
  Iran's renowned nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh once 
said ``There is no better way to govern Iran than democracy and social 
justice!''
  Professor Esfandieri should be released immediately. Every day she is 
so unjustly detained, Iran proves the case of its detractors and makes 
it all the more difficult for institutions like Dr. Esfandieri's Wilson 
Center to treat the Iranian people with the respect that should be 
afforded to an historic civilization and citizenship of 70 million 
people.

Statement on the Arrest in Tehran of Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the 
              Woodrow Wilson Center's Middle East Program

       Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at 
     the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a 
     dual Iranian-American national, was arrested in Tehran on May 
     8 and incarcerated in the Evin Prison.
       The background to this entirely unjustified arrest is as 
     follows:


                          time line of events

       December 21, 2006, Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle 
     East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for 
     Scholars, and a dual Iranian-American national, traveled from 
     Washington D.C. to Tehran, Iran to visit her 93-year-old 
     mother for one week.
       On December 30, 2006, on her way to the airport to catch a 
     flight back to Washington, the taxi in which Dr. Esfandiari 
     was riding was stopped by three masked, knife-wielding men. 
     They threatened to kill her, and they took away all of her 
     belongings, including her Iranian and American passports.
       On January 3, when applying for replacement Iranian travel 
     documents at the passport office, Dr. Esfandiari was invited 
     to an ``interview'' by a man from Iran's Ministry of 
     Intelligence.
       Beginning on January 4, she was subjected to a series of 
     interrogations that stretched out over the next six weeks, 
     sometimes continuing for as many as four days a week, and 
     sometimes stretching across seven and eight hours in a single 
     day. Dr. Esfandiari went home every evening, but the 
     interrogations were unpleasant and not free from intimidation 
     and threat.
       The questioning focused almost entirely on the activities 
     and programs of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. 
     Dr. Esfandiari answered all questions fully; when she could 
     not remember details of programs stretching back five and 
     even eight years, the staff at the Wilson Center provided her 
     all the information requested. As a public organization, all 
     Wilson Center activities are on the public record. Repeatedly 
     during the interrogation, she was pressured to make a false 
     confession or to falsely implicate the Wilson Center in 
     activities in which it had no part, but she refused.
       On Friday, January 15, in the third week of interrogations, 
     Dr. Esfandiari was told (misleadingly as it turned out) the 
     questioning was over. On January 18, the interrogator and 
     three other men showed up at Dr. Esfandiari's mother's 
     apartment. Dr. Esfandiari was taking a nap and was startled 
     to wake up and see the door to her bedroom open, her privacy 
     violated, and three strange men, one of them wielding a 
     video-camera, staring into her bedroom.
       On February 14, the lengthy interrogations stopped.
       On February 17, Haleh received one threatening phone call, 
     and then she did not hear anything from her interrogators for 
     ten weeks.
       On February 20, Lee Hamilton, president and director of the 
     Wilson Center, wrote to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 
     asking that Dr. Esfandiari be allowed to travel. However, 
     President Ahmadinejad did not reply to the letter.
       At the end of April or early May, she was telephoned once 
     again and invited to ``cooperate.'' In effect, she was being 
     asked to make a confession. She refused to make the false 
     statements.
       On Monday, May 7 she was summoned to the Ministry of 
     Intelligence once again. When she arrived for her appointment 
     on Tuesday morning, May 8th, she was put into a car and taken 
     to Evin prison. She was incarcerated and was allowed only one 
     phone call to her mother.
       On May 9 she called her mother asking her to bring her 
     clean clothes and her medicine. Her mother delivered the 
     small package at Evin Prison on May 10, but was not allowed 
     to see her.
       On May 12, the hard-line daily ``Kayhan'' in an article 
     accused Dr. Esfandiari of working with the U.S. and Israeli 
     governments and with involvement in efforts to topple Iran's 
     Islamic regime.
       On May 15, Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi 
     said that Dr. Esfandiari was being investigated for crimes 
     against national security and that her case was being handled 
     by the Intelligence Ministry.
       On May 15, Haleh made a brief telephone call to her mother.
       On May 16, Haleh's family retained the legal services of 
     Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi to represent her.
       On May 17, in an interview with Washington Post Staff 
     Writer Robin Wright, Shirin Ebadi indicated that the Iranian 
     government has rejected her request to represent Dr. 
     Esfandiari. She also noted the court refused information on 
     the legal charges against Dr. Esfandiari, and denied her 
     legal team the ability to see Haleh.
       On May 21 state-run television broadcasts in Iran indicated 
     that Haleh is being charged with seeking to topple the 
     government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
       Our efforts to obtain Haleh's release will continue and 
     will be redoubled. She will be in our thoughts and prayers 
     every day.

                          ____________________