WORLD / Middle East
Iran TV shows detained Iranian-Americans
(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-20 10:14
TEHRAN, Iran - Two Iranian-Americans accused of conspiring against the
government were shown on state-run television for a second time Thursday
with montages of separate quotes combined to form what could be
interpreted as incriminating statements.
An image grab taken from footage broadcast 16 July 2007 by the Islamic
Republic of Iran News Network shows US-Iranian Haleh Esfandiari talking
to a camera at an unidentified place and time in Iran. [AFP]
It was the second episode of a program on Haleh Esfandiari and Kian
Tajbakhsh, who spoke in Farsi in an office or home setting. The first
installment, aired on Wednesday, had similar montages of disparate quotes
and supporters of the detainees and the US government have called the
program illegitimate and coerced.
"After five months of staying in Iran, I concluded that these people and
I ... in the name of democracy ... were trying to create a network to
lead to very essential changes in the system of Iran," said Esfandiari,
director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars.
"It means to make the system unstable," she said.
Esfandiari, 67, was detained in January. She has been held largely
incommunicado since May except for brief telephone conversations with her
mother, whom she was visiting before her detention.
The broadcast drew condemnation from the Soros Foundation's Open Society
Institute, which Tajbakhsh works for. The New York based group said it
was "deeply concerned over Iran's use of deliberately contrived
television footage" of the two.
"OSI is saddened by this abuse of their dignity, and disturbed by this
attempt to deceive the Iranian public and the world about their
activities and their current situation," the institute said.
Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the OSI who has been held
since May, said his organization had a "long-term aim ... to create a gap
between the government and nation ... to put pressure on the government
to change."
Tajbakhsh, 45, said their aim was to bring a "model of the Western
democracy" to Iran after an eventual conflict. He added that Soros'
"investments after the collapse of the Soviet Union might have been
targeting the world of Islam."
He said the foundation has turned toward countries such as Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and Pakistan.
Esfandiari said she had met with a representative of the Soros Foundation
who said "they were interested in supporting sessions of lectures on
Iran" - allegedly a scenario for creating a network of Iranian activists
and scholars and their foreign supporters.
"Relations between the US government and research institutes was
integrated," said Esfandiari, in what was apparently meant to hint at a
US role in influencing Iranian political change.
It was not clear when the program was recorded. Much of Thursday's
36-minute installment was about political changes in Ukraine, Georgia. In
one segment, former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said that
"young Georgian politicians, who swept him from power, were financially
supported by the Soros Foundation."
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of Iran's parliamentary committee on
national security and foreign policy, said the "confessions" of the two
detainees proved they planned to repeat the revolutions of some Eastern
European countries in Iran with US financing.
"We hope that the Americans and intelligence departments ... will learn
that Iran has enough capabilities to detect any plot and undertake
corresponding reaction," Boroujerdi told state-run television.
Iran has been accused of forcing some detainees to incriminate themselves
publicly on television. British sailors detained for allegedly entering
Iranian waters were freed in April after appearing in videos in which
they "admitted" trespassing. Other people have continued to endure
prolonged jail time even after their purported confessions were broadcast
on TV.
Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh have been accused of endangering Iran's national
security, and the government has said new evidence had pushed its
judiciary to further investigate their cases. Two other Iranian-Americans
are also being held on national security charges.
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United
States was "appalled by the fact that these innocent people were paraded
on Iranian state television."
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