Iran urges Kenya to release two arrested lawyers

TEHRAN, Dec 2, (AFP): Iran on Friday urged Kenya to release two of its citizens charged by a Nairobi court with planning a terrorist act after being arrested for filming the Israeli embassy.

The two men, Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahimi and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee, are “official lawyers of the justice ministry ... who travelled to Nairobi on behalf of the families of two Iranian prisoners in Kenya for a legal follow-up”, said foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.

Ebrahimi and Safaee were arrested Tuesday by Kenyan anti-terrorism police after filming outside the Israeli embassy, allegedly in an Iranian embassy car.

The men, along with a Kenyan driver also charged on Thursday, had been to Kamiti prison outside Nairobi to visit two other Iranians, Ahmad Mohammed and Sayed Mousavi, serving a 15-year term for possessing explosives after being convicted in 2013.

Ghasemi said the arrest of the two lawyers had been the result of a “misunderstanding” after “the intervention of some third parties into the case”, and called for their immediate release.