Haleh Esfandiari is a past contributor to Foreign Policy magazine, which has been following her arrest since last month. Foreign Policy has just published a new interview with Haleh’s husband, Dr. Shaul Bakhash, a professor at George Mason Univerity. Here is an excerpt:

FP: Has anyone heard from Dr. Esfandiari? What are conditions like in the prison?

SB: Haleh has been allowed to make very brief phone calls to her mother in Tehran. These calls last barely a minute, and nothing of substance can be said during them. Our assumption is that there is always a minder standing behind her. But we have absolutely no information on what is going on inside the prison. Our assumption is that she’s still in solitary confinement. Shirin Ebadi describes the cells of Evin prison as very small. Prisoners in this particular security ward sleep on a blanket, not a mattress. Interrogation methods involve intimidation and threats, often fabrications designed to disorient and frighten the detainee. Obviously the aim is often to coerce a false confession from the detainee.

Haleh is 67 years old. She has a fairly serious eye problem, macular degeneration, which requires constant monitoring, and she hasn’t been able to see her eye doctor since she was stopped from leaving Iran. She also has a bone condition which needs monitoring, and we’re not sure whether she has the medications she needs in Evin prison. On one occasion, when her mother tried to deliver some pills that she needs, they refused to accept delivery at the prison gate. Her mother is 93 years old, and we are also very worried about her anxiety and her mental and physical condition as a result of this incarceration.

Dr. Bakhash will be speaking at the rally for Haleh outside the UN on Wednesday at noon. If you can make it to Manhattan, please come and show your support.

Three top British rights groups wrote the Iranian Ambassador in Britain a letter demanding the release of the detained Iranian-American academics. They also expressed their concern over the general state of human rights in Iran.

We are gravely concerned that Tajbakhsh, Esfandiari and Shakeri have been charged in violation of their right to freedom of expression, as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory, and call for their immediate and unconditional release.

For the full text, please click here

As we wait for updates on Haleh’s fate from Iran (with information from the Iranian Judiciary due any day now), the Woodrow Wilson Center suggests one simple way to keep the Free Haleh campaign alive in your local community:

Are you a member of a book group? If so, help raise awareness about the unjust imprisonment of Haleh Esfandiari by making her book Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution the next on your list for reading and discussion.

The Wilson Center has a webpage with further information. You can order Haleh’s book via Amazon.

Amnesty International has just announced a United Nations vigil for the release of Iranian-American scholars detained in Iran. Mark your calendar for June 27 at noon and come to New York City to join the peaceful vigil:

VIGIL TO SUPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND TO CALL FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF DETAINED IRANIAN-AMERICANS

THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT HAS RECENTLY BEEN ENGAGED IN A WIDESPREAD CRACKDOWN ON CIVIL SOCIETY IN IRAN

In May the government of Iran arrested four Iranian-Americans: prominent U.S. scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, journalist Parnaz Azima and activist Ali Shakeri. Esfandiari, Tajbakhsh and Shakeri remain in detention without being able to see family, lawyers, or the ICRC. All four face serious charges stemming from their efforts to promote an Iranian-American dialogue and scholarly work and could be sentenced to long prison terms.

JOIN AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, THE AMERICAN ISLAMIC CONGRESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH AS WE CALL FOR THE RELEASE AND DROPPING OF UNFOUDNED CHARGES AGAINST THE DETAINED IRANIAN-AMERICANS

Haleh Esfandiari

SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE SHAUL BAKHASH, HUSBAND OF HALEH ESFANDIARI, AND ZAINAB AL-SUWAIJ OF THE AMERICAN ISLAMIC CONGRESS

WHERE: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 1st Avenue and 47nd Street across from the United Nations Plaza

WHEN: Wednesday June 27, 12 noon to 1 pm

Feel free to bring signs calling for freedom for the detained activists. This is to be a non-political and non-partisan action advocating human rights

For more information contact Sharon McCarter 202-691-4016 or Amnesty International USA 202-675-8755

Haleh’s attorney, Shirin Ebadi, is still unable to see or speak to Haleh after claims made by a justice minister spokesman, Ali Reza Jamshidi, that Ebadi has full access to her client.

Nobel prize winner and lawyer Shirin Ebadi said on Wednesday that she was still being denied access to jailed US-Iranian scholar Haleh Esfandiari after Iran’s judiciary said access was no problem.

Ebadi, appointed Esfandiari’s lawyer by her family, said in a fax obtained by AFP that “on Wednesday I went to the investigating judge in the revolutionary court, and just like Monday I was not allowed in to see her.”

The peace laureate said she went to Evin prison, where Esfandiari is being held pending a possible trial, where the deputy public prosecutor “declined me permission to meet my client.”

“There is no problem for her to be the lawyer and carry out her legal job with freedom, as she has done before,” he added.

However, on Monday, Ebadi said she went to Tehran’s revolutionary court for a meeting with prosecutors but was told Esfandiari “did not need a lawyer”.

Read the article in its entirety here

According to judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi, next week an Iranian Judge will decide whether to indict Haleh on charges brought against her by the Intelligence Ministry. Jamshidi also commented on statements regarding Haleh’s legal representation:

Jamshidi denied that one of the detainees, academic Haleh Esfandiari, had been prevented from gaining access to her lawyer, Iranian Nobel Peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

“She (Ebadi) can come right now and take on the case,” the judiciary spokesman told a news conference, after being asked to comment on Ebadi’s statement on Monday that her client was unable to contact her.

Iran has accused Esfandiari and three other Iranian-Americans of activities aimed at undermining the government of the Islamic Republic. Three have been detained and a fourth has been freed on bail.

For the full text of the article, please click here

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has formally charged Haleh with with espionage and “endangering national security through propaganda against the system.” The Wilson Center’s President and Director, Lee Hamilton, had the following to say:

We are extremely disheartened to receive this news, Haleh is a scholar. The work she does at the Wilson Center is open, non-partisan, and includes a broad range of views. At the Wilson Center, we do not take positions on issues, but rather, we bring all sides of an issue together for dialogue.

As director of the Middle East Program, Haleh ensured that there was an open dialogue and that she convened meetings which allowed participants and attendees to discuss all views. We do not engage in propaganda. The Wilson Center receives zero funding from the U.S. government’s fund to promote democracy in Iran. Her detention is an affront to the rule of law and common decency.

Please visit the Woodrow Wilson Center website here for more information

“..their cases point to a disturbing trend: People with connections to the West, particularly scholars, are being fingered as part of a vast conspiracy aimed at toppling the regime. Countless other Iranians, some of them dual nationals but many of them not, have also had their passports seized. Iran’s civil society–women’s rights activists, unionists, students, journalists–has been the larger casualty of this crackdown.”

To read the full article, click here

Several prominent intellectuals, philosophers and jurists have signed a petition on behalf of Haleh Esfandiari. It is being circulated by the New York Review of books. It will appear in the June 27 issue of the Review.

The arbitrary detention and confinement of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian-American scholar and the director of the Middle East program at the nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., is the latest distressing episode in an ongoing crackdown by the Islamic Republic against those who, directly or indirectly, strive to bolster the foundations of civil society and promote human rights in Iran.

To read the full letter of petition, please CLICK HERE