Iranian Foreign Ministry today confirmed an earlier report by Reuters
that the security agents in Tehran have detained a senior Iranian diplomat.
Bagher Asadi, who was a senior member of Iran's U.N. mission in New York and
was most recently a director at the secretariat of the D8 group of developing
nations in Istanbul, was arrested in mid-March.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) said in its news
broadcast today that a senior Foreign Ministry officer has confirmed the arrest
and detention of Mr. Bagheri. (IRINN, 2 May)
The authorities have not revealed the charges against Bagheri. In January 2004, he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times supporting the reformist policies of then-President Khatami. He warned of the potential negative consequences of a conservative victory in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad won that election.
File photo: Bagher Asadi (right) with Kamal Kharazi, then Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., and Kofi Annan, then the U.N. Secretary General, in an undated photo (g77.org/BBC)
The authorities have not revealed the charges against Bagheri. In January 2004, he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times supporting the reformist policies of then-President Khatami. He warned of the potential negative consequences of a conservative victory in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad won that election.
File photo: Bagher Asadi (right) with Kamal Kharazi, then Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., and Kofi Annan, then the U.N. Secretary General, in an undated photo (g77.org/BBC)
the regime torturers haven't revealed a charge because they haven't had time to torture him into some bullshit confession of something or other.
ReplyDeletehe's probably suspected of tendencies toward rational thinking, which would make him an enemy of the regime.