Washington Post reporter recounts days incarcerated in Tehran jail
washington — A pawn in a game of international chess, Jason Rezaian, the Tehran correspondent for
The Washington Post, spent 544 days in an Iranian prison.
As Rezaian languished behind bars in Evin Prison, the high-stakes match was being played over the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.
“I was treated as an Iranian but when it came time to make a trade, I was traded as an American,” Rezaian, the son of an Iranian-born father and an American mother, said in an interview. “It is a hypocritical way, but a very Iranian way of doing business.”
Rezaian, 42, who was born and raised in California, recounts his 18-month ordeal in a memoir,
which came out at the end of January.
Rezaian and his wife, Yeganah, were arrested on July 22, 2014 after he returned from Vienna, where he had covered a negotiating session between Iran and the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.
Rezaian was accused by the Iranian authorities of being the station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Tehran.
His Iranian interrogators were
particularly suspicious about a quixotic Kickstarter campaign he launched to bring avocados — a fruit that is not found in Iran — to the country.
He soon came to realise that his “value” and that of his Iranian-born wife was linked to the delicate negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.
Rezaian and his wife also found themselves caught up in the middle of a power struggle among the leadership of the Islamic Republic over the nuclear deal and the country’s relations with the West.
“The (faction) that didn’t want relationships (with the West) was responsible for my arrest and they were doing everything they could to undermine the negotiations between the Rouhani administration and (P5+1),” he said.
“It was a very complex situation as — at the same time — Rouhani’s folks that were negotiating understood that they could use me as leverage as well,” the journalist said.
During his 18 months in Evin Prison, in northern Tehran, Rezaian was interrogated, threatened with dismemberment and told he could receive life in prison or even the death sentence. —