Check Online To See If You Are Wanted, Iran Warns Expatriates
Amid fears of more hostage-taking by the Iranian government, Tehran said expatriates can access an online service to check their “security” status.
Amid fears of more hostage-taking by the Iranian government, Tehran said expatriates can access an online service to check their “security” status.
According to Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian expatriates can check online to see whether they will be arrested by the regime’s security forces in case they travel to their homeland as many have before them, such as high profile cases including British-Iranian , arrested on a visit home to her family in 2016 as part of a long-running debt Iran claimed the UK owed.
Though the online system has been in place for two years, the latest update comes amid growing concerns of Iranians abroad, many of whom have been subject to intimidation and threats to their lives from state security forces for supporting the 2022 uprising.
“The few Iranians who are at times worried about coming to Iran under the influence of certain hostile media outlets, can be assured of having trouble-free travel to the country by consulting the ‘Porseman-e Taradod’ system,” Amir-Abdollahian claimed.
Back in January, Alireza Bigdeli, Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs, vowed that the online system will provide “honest” answers to Iranian expatriates before their travel to the country.
Multiple cases of dual-nationals in Iranian prisons are ongoing such as Swedish-Iranian Ahmadreza Djalali, German-Iranians Nahid Taghavi and Jamshid Sharmahd and French-Iranian Fariba Adelkhah. In March, Iran demanded $2.5 billion for the release of US-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd, who is on death row.
Iran has long used a policy of hostage taking to leverage power over Western governments. Last year, the United States allowed the release of $6 billion of Iran's blocked funds in South Korea in exchange for the release of five US-Iranian hostages.
As Iran becomes even more emboldened, it has expanded its hostage taking to public figures, including the arrest and imprisonment of an EU representative, Johan Floderus, amidst an ongoing dispute with Sweden which has sentenced a regime insider to life in prison on terror charges.
On Thursday, the judiciary's news agency, Mizan, released pictures of a woman's torso, concealing the head, without specifying the exact location, and claiming it belonged to Nika Shakarami. The so-called report cited the judge assigned to the case, who said that a day after Shakarami went missing, they got a call about a body found in a courtyard.
CCTV footage from an alley was also included in Mizan's report, supposedly showing Shakarami entering the building, but Nika's mother told BBC Persian she could not "under any circumstances, confirm that person is Nika."
The report details there being a backpack on a nearby roof and a mobile phone playing music when the body was found, suggesting she had jumped to her own death, but saying it was "impossible to identify the body because it had no identification."
Mizan claims security forces identified Shakarami after her mother reported that she was missing in September 2022 amid the uprising sparked by the death in morality-police custody of Mahsa Amini.
However, the report failed to mention why Shakarami had access to this seemingly random building since Iranian households' roofs are heavily protected and not easily accessible to strangers. Mizan claims that local residents heard a loud noise around 5am which they allegedly thought “was a cat,” a claim not readily accepted since a human body falling from the roof would have more impact.
As reported by the BBC on Tuesday, 16-year-old Shakarami was sexually assaulted and murdered by members of Iran's security forces after being arrested for having burnt her hijab in public.
Slamming the reports on Iran International, BBC, and CNN about the murder as “fake,” Mizan branded reports as “unverified news” and “fabricating false information.”
Four days after Amini was killed, videos appeared showing Shakarami setting fire to her hijab at a protest in Tehran. The young girl then suddenly vanished, authorities informing the family nine days later that her body had been found, and claiming that she had committed suicide.
The BBC report this week detailed how Shakarami was killed by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces, citing a "very confidential" document addressed to the organization’s commander-in-chief. Names of her killers and senior commanders who tried to conceal the truth were included.
The BBC report cites the teen was sexually assaulted in the back of the security guards van after her arrest. Quoting the forces themselves in the report, one of them “had his hands down her pants.”
According to the BBC's account, one officer physically restrained and assaulted Shakarami while she resisted, resulting in a fatal response with batons.
Shakarami's death came amid the biggest challenge to Iran's theocratic regime since the founding of the Islamic Republic.
According to Iran Human Rights, throughout the months-long rallies which began in September 2022, 551 protesters, including 68 children and 49 women, were killed by the security forces. There have also been 22 protesters who have died by suicide or under suspicious circumstances, among them four children and eight women.
On Thursday, the UN called the BBC investigation into the death of Shakarami “very very troubling”. The UN fact-finding mission in March announced the Iranian regime committed crimes against humanity by cracking down on the 2022 protests, such as by killing, incarcerating, torturing, and sexually assaulting protesters.
