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Post reporter Jason Rezaian and others to be freed in prisoner swap, according to Iranian media Plane leaves Iran with Post reporter, other Americans in swap
(1 day later)
VIENNA — Iran has released four imprisoned U.S. citizens, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, as part of a swap, the office of Tehran’s prosecutor announced Saturday, according to Iranian news media. VIENNA — The United States and Iran moved into a new era of international relations Saturday, with the implementation of a landmark agreement on Iran’s nuclear program on a drama-filled day that also saw the release of imprisoned Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and four other Americans.
The other released prisoners include Amir Hekmat, a former U.S. Marine, and Saeed Abedni, a pastor, and a fourth unnamed American. All four are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens. Rezaian has been held since 2014. U.S. and European officials lifted the harshest economic sanctions against Tehran after the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog certified that the Islamic republic had fully complied with promises to curtail key parts of its nuclear program. Hours before diplomats in the Austrian capital hailed the official activation of the nuclear deal, Iran confirmed the release of Rezaian and the other American detainees, set free in exchange for U.S. clemency offered to seven Iranians charged or imprisoned for sanctions violations and the dismissal of outstanding charges against 14 Iranians outside the United States.
According to Iran’s Fars News Agency, the four were ordered released in exchange for six Iranian-Americans held in the United States on sanctions-related charges. Rezaian and two other released Americans were flown out of Tehran on Sunday, after a delay. They were expected to go to Switzerland, then to a U.S. military facility in Germany to be examined by medical personnel. One of the Americans, Nosratollah ­Khosravi-Roodsari, did not fly out with the others, U.S. officials said.
A statement by the prosecutor said that “based on an approval of the Supreme National Security Council and the general interests of the Islamic Republic, four Iranian prisoners with dual-nationality were freed today within the framework of a prisoner swap deal,” Fars reported. [A misunderstanding held up the departure of 4 Americans in swap]
There was no official confirmation from the United States. Kris Coratti, vice president of communications and spokeswoman for The Post, said that “while we are hopeful, we have not received any official word of Jason’s release.” “We can confirm that our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left,” a senior administration official said. “We have no further information to share at this time and would ask that everyone respect the privacy of these individuals and their families.”
News of the exchange came as world leaders converged here Saturday in anticipation of the end of international sanctions against Iran in exchange for significantly curtailing its nuclear program. The coordinated moves cemented a major diplomatic victory for the Obama administration, which won significant nuclear concessions from Iran in an effort to defuse an international crisis that threatened to spark a new Middle East war. The agreement also frees Iran from crippling economic sanctions and opens the way for ending decades of diplomatic and economic isolation.
The nuclear agreement will take effect when the International Atomic Energy Agency certifies that Iran has met its commitments under the deal it signed last July with six global powers, including the United States. “This evening, we are really reminded once again of diplomacy’s power to tackle significant challenges,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said after the implementation was announced. “We have approached this challenge with the firm belief that exhausting diplomacy before choosing war is an imperative. And we believe that today marks the benefits of that choice.”
Secretary of State John F. Kerry flew from London to Vienna in the early afternoon local time. He went immediately into a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Coburg Palace Hotel, the scene of months-long final negotiations last summer that led to the deal between Iran and the world powers. But the agreement also contains significant political risk for a White House that is staking its legacy on Iran’s willingness to comply with unprecedented curbs and extensive monitoring of its nuclear program. The pact which has been repeatedly condemned by the Israeli government as well as by members of Congress from both parties drew fresh attacks Saturday from Republican presidential contenders, some of whom blasted the deal as a sellout to Iran’s clerical rulers.
[How the nuclear deal with Iran works] The nuclear pact calls on Iran to dismantle key nuclear equipment in a deal designed to ensure that Iranian officials could never accumulate enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb. The agreement also requires unprecedented inspections and monitoring covering all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, from uranium mining to research facilities.
Iranian, European and U.S. officials have said repeatedly over the past week that IAEA certification and implementation of the agreement was just “days” away. But the delay in what initially was to be an announcement Saturday morning, Vienna time, suggested that some last-minute issues still needed to be ironed out. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif echoed Kerry’s remarks, saying on Twitter that “diplomacy requires patience, but we all know that it sure beats the alternatives.” Implementation of the deal, Zarif said, meant that “it’s now time for all especially Muslim nations to join hands and rid the world of violent extremism. Iran is ready.”
Zarif was brimming with optimism when he arrived earlier in the day and met with Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief. The release of prisoners had not been officially part of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. But Kerry frequently raised the plight of imprisoned U.S. citizens during last year’s nuclear talks.
“This is a good day for the Iranian people . . . and for the world,” he told Iranian media. “What is going to happen today is proof . . . that major problems in the world could be tackled through dialogue, not threats, pressures and sanctions.” The Obama administration had come under heavy criticism for concluding the nuclear accord without winning the release of American detainees, including Rezaian, 39, whose 544-day detention is the longest ever by a Western journalist in Iran. White House officials confirmed that the swap was clinched during months of secret talks that gained momentum in the days before the nuclear pact was formally implemented.
[Full text of the Iran nuclear deal] “Friends and colleagues at The Washington Post are elated by the wonderful news that Jason Rezaian has been released from Evin Prison and has safely left the country with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi,” said Frederick J. Ryan Jr., publisher of The Post. “We are enormously grateful to all who played a role in securing his release. Our deep appreciation also goes to the many government leaders, journalists, human rights advocates and others around the world who have spoken out on Jason’s behalf and against the harsh confinement that was so wrongly imposed upon him,” he said.
Under the agreement, the Vienna-based IAEA is tasked with verifying that Iran has met the terms of the deal including the mothballing of most of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, the shipment of enriched-uranium stockpiles out of the country and the disabling its Arak nuclear reactor, capable of yielding plutonium. The IAEA is also charged with monitoring the country’s program for years to come to ensure that Iran is not moving toward nuclear weapons production. “Now a free man, Jason will be reunited with his family, including his brother Ali, his most effective and tireless advocate. We look forward to the joyous occasion of welcoming him back to the Washington Post newsroom,” Ryan said.
Iran has said that it never intended to build nuclear weapons and that its program is for peaceful energy and medical research purposes. Iran’s judiciary announced the release in Tehran as part of an exchange. The United States is releasing seven people charged with violating sanctions against Iran, U.S. and Iranian officials said.
International sanctions are officially lifted as soon as the IAEA certification is made, giving Iran access to more than $50 billion in long-frozen assets in international banks. At the same time, the United States will issue guidance to banks and businesses to explain what commerce will be allowed. Some U.S. sanctions will remain in effect. A senior U.S. official said the “Iranians wanted a goodwill gesture” in response to the release of the Americans. A list of Iranians submitted to U.S. authorities was “whittled down” to exclude any crimes related to violence or terrorism, said the official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity under administration ground rules.
Petitions seeking Reziain’s release cited the journalist’s “declining health,” saying he continued to lose weight and suffer from blood pressure complications and other undertreated physical and mental conditions. It said he was subjected to “further interrogations, psychological abuse, and physical mistreatment” and was “forced to wear a hood” when being escorted around the prison by guards or interrogators. Another official said the exchange was a “one-time arrangement because it was an opportunity to bring Americans home” and should not be considered something that would “encourage this behavior in the future” by Iran.
Born in Marin County, Calif., to an Iranian emigre father and an American mother, Rezaian moved to Iran in 2008 and worked as a journalist for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle. He joined The Post in 2012 and wrote stories that he hoped would give readers a deeper and more nuanced view of Iran; one of his last recounted the travails of the country’s fledgling baseball team. The officials did not tie the release directly to the nuclear talks and said they had not wanted the detained Americans to be “used as leverage” in the negotiations. But, they said, completion of the nuclear deal last July greatly accelerated talks about the prisoners.
Rezaian was arrested along with his wife when security forces raided their home on July 22, 2014. Salehi, 31, a journalist who worked for the Abu Dhabi newspaper, the National, was released on bail in October, but Rezaian languished in Evin Prison for months without trial or even specific charges. In addition to Rezaian, the Americans freed Saturday included Saeed Abedini, 35, of Boise, Idaho; Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, 32, of Flint, Mich.; and Khosravi-Roodsari, U.S. and Iranian officials said.
In December 2014, Rezaian was officially charged with publicly unspecified offenses, and prosecutors announced a month later that he would be tried in Revolutionary Court. The case was assigned to Abolghassem Salavati, a hard-line judge known for imposing draconian sentences including long prison terms, lashings and execution on political prisoners and detainees deemed a threat to national security. Salavati has been under European Union sanctions since 2011. A fifth American, identified as language student Matt Trevithick, was also released Saturday but was not part of the exchange deal. Trevithick’s parents said in a statement that he had been held for 40 days in Evin Prison. A senior U.S. official said Trevithick, 30, has already left Iran.
Rezaian’s attorney, Leila Ahsan, disclosed last April that an indictment she was allowed to read charged Rezaian with espionage and three other serious crimes, including “collaborating with hostile governments” and “propaganda against the establishment.” Rezaian was also accused of gathering information “about internal and foreign policy” and providing it to “individuals with hostile intent.” Abedini is a Christian pastor who had been imprisoned since July 2012 for organizing home churches. Hekmati is a former Marine who spent more than four years in prison on spying charges following his arrest in August 2011 during a visit to see his grandmother.
The charges carried a maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison, Ahsan said. The detention of Khosravi-Roodsari had not been previously publicized. Iranian state television identified him as a businessman. Little else was known about him.
Rezaian and The Post vigorously denied the accusations. A senior administration official said of Trevithick, “We wanted him, obviously, to be a direct part of this, and made clear to Iranians that [his release] would be an appropriate humanitarian gesture.”
When he went on trial in May last year, the court proceedings indicated that some of the claims against Rezaian stemmed from a visit he made to a U.S. consulate regarding a visa for his wife and a letter he wrote seeking a job in the Obama administration in 2008 material that was apparently taken from his confiscated laptop. The exchange quickly became political fodder in the United States among Republicans vying for the GOP presidential nomination.
[Imprisonment took “devastating toll” on Post reporter] Republican front-runner Donald Trump said it was “a total disgrace” that the release of the Americans took so long. “This should have been done three, four years ago, when the [nuclear] deal was struck. Before the deal was made­ . . . they should have said, ‘We want our prisoners back,’ ” Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in a television interview Saturday: “We’d be very happy for the families of the Americans who are going to be home and for those Americans, but I’d also want to hear what the other side of the deal is, if this president is releasing more terrorists from Guantanamo to go back and reenter the war on terror. . . . We shouldn’t have to swap prisoners. These folks were taken illegally in violation of international law, and they should have been released without condition.”
Rezaian’s ordeal damaged his health, drew protests from media and human rights groups, and hampered efforts to improve relations between Washington and Tehran. It also exposed fault lines and infighting in Iran’s opaque political system, where Rezaian and other detained Americans appeared to become pawns in a larger internal struggle between hard-liners and reformists seeking to improve ties with the West.
[Post coverage of Americans detained in Iran]
Rezaian was tried last year behind closed doors on vague charges of espionage and other alleged offenses and was sentenced to an unspecified prison term.
His 2014 arrest and subsequent trial and conviction in Iran’s secretive Revolutionary Court system — on charges that were never publicly disclosed or substantiated — appeared to reflect a power play by hard-liners fiercely loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against more moderate reformist elements under President Hassan Rouhani. The hard-liners control Iran’s security forces, intelligence apparatus, judiciary and most other levers of power, while Rouhani — though answerable to Khamenei — has been given relatively free rein to manage Iran’s foreign affairs and improve its economy.
In recent weeks, Iran took significant steps to meet its obligations under the deal.
Increased U.S.-Iranian cooperation appeared to be on display Wednesday when Iran released 10 U.S. sailors within a day after they were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces in the Persian Gulf. The Americans were on two small riverine boats that strayed into Iranian waters.
Against this backdrop, the signs of rapprochement raised hopes for a resolution in Rezaian’s case.
Rezaian was arrested along with his wife when security forces raided their home July 22, 2014. Yeganeh Salehi, 31, a journalist who worked for the Abu Dhabi newspaper the National, was released on bail in October, but Rezaian languished in Evin Prison for months without trial or even specific charges.
Rezaian holds both U.S. and Iranian citizenship. But Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, barred any U.S. role in the case, including consular visits by Swiss diplomats representing U.S. interests. Diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran were severed in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis.Rezaian holds both U.S. and Iranian citizenship. But Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, barred any U.S. role in the case, including consular visits by Swiss diplomats representing U.S. interests. Diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran were severed in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis.
The last of four Revolutionary Court sessions was held in August, but it was not until October that a court spokesman announced a conviction — without providing any details. In November, the court said Rezaian was sentenced to a prison term, again with no elaboration.The last of four Revolutionary Court sessions was held in August, but it was not until October that a court spokesman announced a conviction — without providing any details. In November, the court said Rezaian was sentenced to a prison term, again with no elaboration.
In the meantime, Iranian officials floated the idea of a prisoner swap with the United States. President Rouhani even suggested that Tehran could free Rezaian and at least two other Iranian American prisoners if Washington reciprocated by releasing 19 Iranian citizens convicted in the United States of circumventing sanctions. In the meantime, Iranian officials floated the idea of a prisoner swap with the United States. Rouhani even suggested that Tehran could free Rezaian and at least two other Iranian American prisoners if Washington reciprocated by releasing 19 Iranian citizens convicted in the United States of circumventing sanctions.
As if to buttress that proposal, state-run news media in Iran then reported that Rezaian was accused of “spying on Iran’s nuclear programs” and giving the U.S. government information on people and companies evading sanctions.As if to buttress that proposal, state-run news media in Iran then reported that Rezaian was accused of “spying on Iran’s nuclear programs” and giving the U.S. government information on people and companies evading sanctions.
The prisoner-swap maneuvering showed that, for Iran, Rezaian’s innocence was “immaterial” and that what mattered more was whether he could be used to extract political concessions from the United States, The Post argued in its latest submission to the U.N. Working Group in late November. Branigin, DeYoung and Warrick reported from Washington. Ellen Nakashima, Julie Tate and Ariana Cha contributed to this report.
“The Iranian Government’s indiscriminate, baseless, and constantly evolving theories and allegations which continue to change even after the conclusion of his trial provide yet further evidence that Rezaian has committed no crime and is entitled to immediate release and some form of compensation for his wrongful imprisonment,” it said. Read more:
Branigin and DeYoung reported from Washington. The ordeal of Post reporter Jason Rezaian
Jailed Washington Post correspondent has Christmas meal with family
Sketchbook: Jason Rezaian marks a year behind the bars of injustice
The Post’s coverage on Jason Rezaian