American arrested

last updated 8 January 2015

Tehran

Iranian authorities have jailed a prominent Iranian–American scholar. Haleh Esfandiari, who taught Persian at Princeton for years and now directs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, traveled to Iran late last year to visit her elderly mother. As she was about to leave in December, masked men with knives stole her luggage and passport, forcing her to remain in the country. Police interrogated the 67–year–old almost daily before arresting her last week on unspecified charges. The hard–line newspaper Kayhan accused Esfandiari of spying for the U.S. and Israel, a charge the Wilson Center called preposterous. Esfandiari is being held in the notorious Evin prison, where Iranian–Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten to death, allegedly by prison guards, four years ago.