Iranian American's chilling return to homeland

Tehran officials won't let Parnaz Azima leave. She says it's been a case of 'spy, and you're free.'
By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

July 22, 2007

TEHRAN — The man in the green uniform at the immigration control counter at Mehrabad airport stamped her passport. Journalist Parnaz Azima said she breathed a bottomless sigh of relief. It was here the intelligence officers often moved in, discreetly guiding visitors to the small office off to the side that every Iranian traveler knows and fears.

She met her brother, and they went to gather up her bags and head for the exit. Their mother was gravely ill, and Azima was anxious to see her before she died.

That's when they heard someone call out: "Mrs. Azima? Mrs. Azima?"

A man in a black suit escorted her back to the interrogation room.

"You can give me what I want now, or we can search through all of your bags," the man said, according to Azima, an Iranian American with U.S.-funded Radio Farda who is being barred from leaving Iran on charges of spreading propaganda against the regime.

Azima, stripped of her passport that January day, is one of several Iranian Americans swallowed up by their native country's security institutions.

The others are Middle East expert Haleh Esfandiari, sociologist Kian Tajbakhsh and Orange County peace activist Ali Shakeri.

Iranian authorities have subjected all four to interrogations and locked up all but Azima. Azima, 59, is free on more than half a million dollars bail. On the advice of her legal counsel, she has taken her plight public, offering a glimpse of the methods of Iranian security forces.

Azima's legal troubles cap a three-year flirtation with Iran, which she left in 1983 after being purged from her job as a government librarian.

She was branded a counterrevolutionary after the 1979 Islamic Revolution for failing to wear proper Islamic attire. While she was abroad, her brother called and warned her not to return; the Islamic regime's enforcers had come several times to her home, he said, and were looking to arrest her.

So began decades in exile in Europe and then the United States, where Azima forged a career on the East Coast as a translator and journalist. She became a mother, then a grandmother.

Radio Free Europe's Persian-language section, later renamed Radio Farda, or Tomorrow, recruited her in 1998, and she moved to Prague to work at the 24-hour radio station. She assembled reports about Iranian literature and poetry as well as about human rights for women and minorities.

Two years ago, with Iran under the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami, Azima received a surprise: an official invitation to come to Tehran and attend the March 1, 2005, dedication of the new Iranian National Library building.

Azima, who had jumped at the offer despite her initial concerns, was given the royal treatment during her two-week visit.

"They treated me like I was a VIP," Azima said during hours of interviews conducted recently in Tehran. "They asked me to promote their efforts on the radio."

Reconnecting with family and friends, she decided to return the next year for Persian New Year festivities.

By 2006, however, Khatami had retired from office and conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in power. Still, she arrived in Tehran without incident and stayed with her mother for three weeks. But on the day before she was scheduled to head back to the Czech capital, five bearded young men armed with a search warrant and court summons stormed into her mother's apartment.

They went room to room, removing an illegal satellite television receiver and seizing Azima's Iranian passport. They told her to show up at a special security court.

There, she was accused of working for a counterrevolutionary organization. "Isn't the goal of Radio Farda the overthrow of the Islamic Republic?" the interrogator asked, according to Azima's recollection.

No, she replied. The radio outlet adheres to international journalism standards emphasizing fairness, she said.

The Iranian security apparatus had closely monitored her reports, asking her about specific pieces she had broadcast about Iran's Kurdish minority, women's rights, censorship, U.S.-Iranian relations and the treatment of dissidents.

"Isn't it a counterrevolutionary station?" the interrogator asked. "If not, why do you have so much criticism of Iran?"

"As a woman, I am in favor of equal rights for women," she replied. "As a person of culture, I am opposed to censorship. As far as Kurdistan [goes], I interviewed a person from Kurdistan who was later put to death. I am opposed to the death penalty. If these are crimes, I am guilty of all these crimes."

He didn't reply. The session ended.

Azima pleaded with the interrogator to return her passport, but he warned her to keep quiet. "If you don't make a big deal about this, we'll clean it up and you'll be able to go back home," he said.

She warily complied. She posted the deed to her mother's home as bail to keep herself out of jail.

But the interrogator, however, offered her a deal, Azima said. Collaborate with Iranian intelligence services, and you can go home, back to your job at Radio Farda.

Azima refused. She told her interrogator that she was 18 when Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's security service, the SAVAK, approached her and asked her to inform on her fellow students. Back then she also refused.

"I told him, I am almost 60 now and I don't have more than 10 or 15 years left," she said. "I have one son, and the only thing I have to give him is my name and integrity — I'm not going to ruin this at the end of my life."

What they wanted, he said, wasn't much. "If a bomb is about to go off, you'll tell us about it," he said.

"I said to him, 'If a bomb is about to go off, it's my duty to alert the public about it,' " she said. " 'I don't need to make some kind of deal with you.' "

The interviews continued for three weeks, then, they handed back her passport and let her go. After she left, they cleared her of charges and handed back the deed to her mother's home.

But before she left she had a question for her interrogator. Why didn't they arrest her the previous year?

"Last year," he told Azima, "you were our guest."

When Azima's 93-year-old mother fell severely ill this year, Azima found herself facing another harrowing trip to Iran.

Her plane arrived before midnight Jan. 25 at the Tehran airport.

"That CD you brought," the man in the black suit told her. "Hand it over, and we won't search your bag."

Azima wondered whether they were trying to trump up an espionage case against her or just wanted an excuse to search her bags. They found nothing, but again seized her Iranian passport.

Azima's mother recovered from her illness. Azima, along with her lawyer, Mohammed Hossein Aghassi, began navigating the byzantine maze of Iran's security establishment.

An interrogator asked why she had refused to collaborate.

Azima replied that she would never work for them. She asked for her passport back but was told to go home and wait.

Iranian law requires that charges be filed before passports are taken. Still, weeks became months, and no charges were forthcoming.

Frustrated, Azima and her lawyer alerted the international media. They enlisted the support of the Swiss Embassy, which acts as a U.S. liaison in Iran in the absence of formal relations between Washington and Tehran.

Iranian authorities were furious. She was summoned to the Revolutionary Court to face charges May 15.

Aghassi advised Azima to bring her toothpaste and personal items to the court appointment because she might be sent to jail.

She was charged with working for an institution that authorities alleged spreads propaganda against the Iranian regime. Bail was set at about $600,000, the estimated amount Azima earned during nine years at Radio Farda. She put up the deed to her mother's home.

Aghassi said he believed Azima and the three other Iranian Americans were being held against their will in retaliation for the five junior Iranian diplomats detained by the U.S. in a Jan. 11 raid on an Iranian government office in northern Iraq.

"If the five Iranian diplomats are freed in Iraq, then there might be some reciprocity, and Parnaz and other cases may be positively affected," Aghassi said.

Azima considers herself lucky to be out on bail but still feels like a prisoner.

"My situation is unclear," she said. "I have trouble sleeping and eating. I have nightmares."

daragahi@latimes.com

U.S. allows visit to Iranian captives

U.S. allows visit to Iranian captives
American military detained the men in January in northern Iraq on suspicion of spying, but Tehran says they are diplomats.
By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer

July 8, 2007

BAGHDAD — Despite continuing tensions between Washington and Tehran, five Iranians in U.S. military custody in Iraq since January received their first visit Saturday from Iranian diplomats.

The meeting took place at a U.S. military facility in or near Baghdad, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Times.

"We've been working on this for quite some time, to organize a consular visit for the Iranian Embassy to visit their detainees with the U.S. military," Zebari said. "I think it's a good gesture."

The five Iranians were picked up on suspicion of spying in a Jan. 11 raid in the Kurdish city of Irbil, 220 miles north of Baghdad.

Iran has contended that the five men are diplomats and said when they were detained that they worked at a liaison office that it was seeking to upgrade to a consulate.

U.S. officials said the five Iranians did not identify themselves as diplomats when they were detained, and did not have diplomatic credentials.

The U.S. military has said the five belong to the Quds Force, an elite covert unit of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard. Iran has denied the charge.

Some U.S. and Iraqi officials said last month that the five detainees could be released soon, but until now the Americans had refused Iran's request for a meeting with the prisoners.

Zebari said Iraq had been working to arrange the meeting since March when the U.S. and Iran participated in regional talks in Baghdad on Iraqi security.

On Saturday morning, a U.S. military unit picked up Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, and two other diplomats at Iraq's Foreign Ministry in Baghdad, and took them to see the detainees, Zebari said.

"It was a courtesy extended by Multi-National Forces-Iraq in response to a request by the Iranian government," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker.

But Reeker said the visit did not indicate any progress had been made toward holding a second meeting between the United States and Iran after the May 28 talks on Iraq in Baghdad.

Kazemi-Qomi, the Iranian ambassador, told Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam television that his delegation met for five hours with the five men and said their morale was high. He demanded that the United States free them immediately.

There was no indication from either American or Iraqi officials of when the detainees might be released.

In addition to tensions over Iran's nuclear program, Washington accuses Tehran of arming insurgents who are attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner last week accused the Quds Force and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of arming and training Iraqi Shiite militants. Iran and Hezbollah denied the charges.

ned.parker@latimes.com
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Times staff writer Saif Rasheed contributed to this report.

U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, July 2 — Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. The Americans have also cited extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.

But today’s assertions, which were presented at a news briefing here, marked the first time that the United States has charged that Iranian officials have helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and have had advance knowledge of specific attacks that have led to the death of American soldiers.

In effect, American officials are charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American forces for years, though officials today sought to confine their comments to the specific incidents covered in their briefing.

When the Karbala attack was carried out on January 20 this year, American and Iraqi officials said that it appeared to be meticulously planned. The attackers carried forged identity cards and wore American-style uniforms.

One American died at the start of the raid, but the rest of the American soldiers were abducted before they were killed.

Some officials speculated at the time that the aim of the raid might have been to capture a group of American soldiers who could have been exchanged for Iranian officials that American forces detained in Iraq on suspicion of supporting Shiite militants there.

But while Americans officials wondered about an indirect Iranian role in the Karbala raid, until today they stopped short of making a case that the Quds Force may have been directly involved in planning the attack.

General Bergner declined to speculate on the Iranian motivations. But he said that interrogations of Qais Khazali, a Shiite militant who oversaw Iranian-supported cells in Iraq and who was captured several months ago along with another militant, Laith Khazali, his brother, showed that Iran’s Quds force helped plan the operation.

Similar information was obtained following the capture of a senior Hezbollah operative, Ali Musa Daqduq, General Bergner said. The capture of Mr. Daqduq had remained secret until today.

“Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers,” General Bergner said.

Documents seized from Qais Khazali, General Bergner said, showed that Iran’s Quds Force provided detailed information on the activities of American soldiers in Karbala, including shift changes and the defenses at the site.

More generally, General Bergner added, Iran’s Quds Force has been using Lebanese Hezbollah as a “proxy” or “surrogate” in training and equipping Shiite militants in Iraq.

The aim of the Quds force was to prepare the militant groups so they would attack American and Iraqi government force while trying to conceal an obvious Iranian role, he said.

There have long been reports that Hezbollah operatives have been working with the Quds Force to train Iraqi operatives in Iran and even Lebanon. But few details had emerged about specific Hezbollah officials.

According to General Bergner, Ali Musa Daqduq joined Hezbollah in 1983, commanded Hezbollah units in Lebanon and was involved in coordinating the protection of the group’s leader, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has been armed and funded by Iran.

In 2005, the Hezbollah leadership instructed Mr. Daqduq to go to Iran and help the Quds Force train Shiite Iraqi militants, General Bergner said. Mr. Daqduq went to Tehran in 2006 with Yussef Hashim, another Hezbollah operative who serves as the head of the group’s operations in Iraq. They met with the senior Quds force commanders and were directed to go to Iraq and report on efforts to train Shiite militants there, General Bergner said.

Groups of up to 60 Iraqi militants were brought to Iran for military instruction at three camps near Tehran and trained in using road-side bombs, mortars, rockets, kidnapping operations and in how to operate as a sniper. The Quds Force also provided up to $3 million in funding a month to the Iraqi militants, the American general said.

Mr. Daqduq was captured in March in Basra. To avoid giving away his Lebanese accent, he initially pretended that he was a deaf mute, General Bergner said. But he eventually began to speak under interrogation.

In Washington, Bush Administration officials have generally held open the possibility that the Quds Force activities might have been carried out without the knowledge of Iran’s senior leaders.

But military officials say that there is such a long and systematic pattern of Quds Force activity in Iraq, as well as a 2005 confidential American protest to Iranian leaders regarding Iran’s alleged supply of road-side bombs, that senior Iranian leaders must be aware of the Quds Force role in Iraq.

“Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” he said. When he was asked if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said “that would be hard to imagine.”