American-Iranian imprisoned in Iran starts 7 day hunger strike

• Siamak Namazi is a dual citizen of the US and Iran.
• He has been held captive in Iran since 2015 on suspicion of spying.
• Namazi’s father was arrested a month after his son’s 2016 swap with Iran.

A dual citizen of the US and Iran who is being held captive in Iran has started a seven-day hunger strike in protest of the US’s refusal to release him and other dual citizens.

In an open letter, Siamak Namazi urged President Joe Biden to keep his word and carry out the pledge made by his administration to make returning them home a top priority.

He requested that Mr. Biden reflect on them for one minute each day for seven days.

After being detained in 2015 on suspicion of spying, Namazi was eventually found guilty and given a 10-year prison term by the US.

The 51-year-old oil businessman began his hunger strike seven years ago on the day Iran released five Americans in exchange for their release, which also happened to be the day the nuclear agreement between the US and other major powers went into effect.

“When the Obama administration unconscionably left me in peril and freed the other American citizens Iran held hostage on January 16, 2016, the US Government promised my family to have me safely home within weeks,” he wrote in the letter to President Biden.

“Yet seven years and two presidents later, I remain caged in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.”

His father Baquer, 86, was arrested a month after the 2016 swap, after he had travelled to Iran to visit his son in prison.

That October, a Revolutionary Court convicted both men of the charge of “co-operating with a foreign enemy state” and handed them 10-year sentences.

A UN working group criticized their imprisonment as being arbitrary and against international law because they had refuted the allegations.

Additionally, it forewarned that Siamak had allegedly been tortured, beaten, and tasered by Revolutionary Guards at Evin in addition to being held indefinitely in solitary prison.

Baquer’s health deteriorated substantially while he was being held, and on the basis of his health, he was placed under house arrest in 2018. He was only permitted to leave Iran for treatment in October of last year despite the fact that his sentence had been remitted to time served in 2020.

Siamak told Mr. Biden that only the US president had the authority to free him and the other two imprisoned American-Iranians, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, who is also a British citizen.

Siamak was also left out of two prisoner swaps agreed by the Trump administration.

“In the past I implored you to reach for your moral compass and find the resolve to bring the US hostages in Iran home. To no avail. Not only do we remain Iran’s prisoners, but you have not so much as granted our families a meeting.

“So today I feel compelled to adjust my ask. All I want sir, is one minute of your days’ time for the next seven days devoted to thinking about the tribulations of the US hostages in Iran.”

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