Free our citizens, irate Iran tells US

IRAN’S judiciary chief accused the United States yesterday of holding Iranians in gruesome prisons and billions of Iranian assets, as the countries traded charges of illegally jailing each other’s citizens.

“You are keeping our innocent citizens in gruesome prisons,” judiciary head Sadegh Larijani said.

“This is against the law and international norms and regulations,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s state broadcaster.

“You must immediately release Iranian citizens locked up in US prisons.”

The US reacted angrily to news last week that Xiyue Wang, a Princeton University researcher, had been imprisoned for 10 years in Iran for espionage.

President Donald Trump warned of new and serious consequences unless US nationals held in the Islamic republic were released.

Iranian officials have in turn responded by criticising the detention of Iranians in the US.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Washington of holding Iranians on sanction-violations charges “not applicable today for bogus and purely political reasons”, at a Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in New York last week.

Larijani also slammed the seizure of Iranian assets in the US – like a recent ruling to seize a Manhattan skyscraper to compensate terrorism victims.

“They confiscate the assets of the Islamic republic. This is a blatant robbery,” he said.

At least three US nationals are held in Iran.