UK-based academic held in Iran for espionage
A British-Iranian university professor who campaigns against US sanctions targeting Iran has been arrested and accused of espionage by the country’s hardline Revolutionary Guard, according to state media.
Abbas Edalat, an award-win- ning computer scientist and mathematician, was one of several people arrested by the Guard, accused of being part of a “network affiliated with Britain” and linked to unrest surrounding the 2009 re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the semi-official Fars agency.
Prof Edalat is one of at least three British dual nationals held in Iran. His arrest comes amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over the uncertain future of the Iran nuclear deal. At least 30 dual nationals are believed to have been arrested by the Guard since the signing of the agreement in July 2015.
Prof Edalat was arrested on April 15 when he travelled to Iran for an academic workshop, according to the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, which is based in New York. The Guard also raided his home in Tehran and confiscated his belongings including a computer and notebook, according to the group.
He is the second academic from Imperial College London targeted by the Guard. Kaveh Madani was forced to leave Iran and his job as deputy head of the government’s environment agency after pressure from hardliners.
“It looks like the Revolutionary Guard is showing a very strange sensitivity towards Imperial College,” said Hadi Ghaemi of the rights group. “It just shows a very simple-minded understanding of academic institutions.”
Prof Edalat, 63, has worked at Imperial College for 29 years.
“We are understandably concerned for his welfare after reports of his arrest in Iran and we are urgently seeking further information,” said the university.
Prof Edalat was a founder of the “Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran”, a group that regularly posts news articles critical of the US and its allies.
Last year, he told a website that he had stopped submitting research papers to US conferences after Donald Trump issued a travel ban on mostly Muslim-majority countries, including Iran.
Neighbours at the residential block in London where he lives reported seeing Mr Edalat two weeks ago, just before he travelled to Iran. He is a “charming and easy going – a lovely, lovely man”, said one man, who declined to be named.