‘They have ripped our family apart’
Canada protests after professor’s widow detained
After plainclothes agents stopped Maryam Mombeini at Tehran airport and refused to let her leave Iran, she sent off her sons with a bold, clear message: “I just want you guys to be safe and away from this horrible place. Don’t ever come back.”
The sons, Ramin and Mehran Seyed-Emami, arrived in Vancouver Thursday as a major diplomatic furor broke out following the detention of Mombeini, 55, widow of an IranianCanadian professor who died in controversial circumstances in Iran’s notorious Evin prison earlier this year.
“We call on the government of Iran to immediately give Maryam Mombeini, a Canadian citizen, the freedom to return home,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. She said she was “outraged” that Mombeini was barred from leaving Iran for no reason. Freeland said Canada was also continuing to demand answers from Iran on the circumstances surrounding the death of Kavous Seyed-Emami, a 63-year-old sociology professor. Iranian authorities have said Seyed-Emami’s death was a suicide, but the family and others have questioned that finding.
“They have ripped our family apart once. Now they are doing it again, by keeping our mom in Iran,” Mehran Seyed-Emami told The New York Times.
The sons claimed that since the death of their father they had been subjected to harassment and threats and felt they had to leave Iran for their safety. “Our lawyers have been told that we need to keep our mouths shut,” Ramin Seyed-Emami told the Times. “In the street, people have bumped into me, saying I should be careful not to be ‘suicided.’ ”
In an earlier statement, Ramin said the family had been “thrown into chaos and terror” since their father’s death.
“After being constantly harassed and threatened, our family has decided, for the sake of our own safety, to leave Iran and head to Vancouver where we can start a new peaceful life,” he said. Earlier Thursday, the two sons and their mother were at Tehran airport about to board a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt before continuing to Vancouver when Mombeini was told by plainclothes agents she could not leave the country. Her passport was seized and she was briefly detained. Her sons were allowed to leave.
It was difficult to say goodbye, said Ramin, a musician who performs under the name King Raam. “She said, ‘I just want you guys to be safe and away from this horrible place. Don’t ever come back,’” he told reporters at the Vancouver airport, fighting back tears as he spoke. “I have friends with her at all times. I don’t want her to be alone for one single second.” He said his mother’s Iranian passport was confiscated to intimidate them from telling their story. She had spoken directly with Freeland, who assured them she will make it to Canada. “Instead of being able to grieve the loss of our father in peace, we have been forced to endure harassment by the Iranian authorities,” said Ramin, who was born in Iran but also lived with his family in Canada and the U.S. “They’re trying to prevent us from rebuilding our lives.” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, said before Mombeini was told her husband died in Evin, she was interrogated for hours by authorities and forced to sign a statement saying she would not speak to the press. “This level of cruelty against a grieving widow is hard to fathom,” he said. Omar Alghabra, parliamentary secretary for the foreign affairs minister, said the government was “fully committed to reuniting them with their mother and we’ll exercise all diplomatic channels and all actions before us to see their mother reunited with them back home.” That includes communication between Canada and Iran’s representatives at the United Nations. Freeland has requested a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javal Zarif, but had not received a response by midThursday. Seyed-Emami was a professor of sociology at Imam Sadeq University in Tehran and the managing director of the Persian Heritage Wildlife Foundation. He was arrested Jan. 24.
Last month, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said authorities arrested several unidentified people on suspicion of spying under the cover of scientific and environmental projects.
The authorities said the professor hanged himself in an isolation cell after two weeks of interrogation. “The day he entered that facility, he died,” Ramin told The New York Times.