IDA Member Held in Iran

Documentary filmmaker and IDA member Mohammad Ehsani has been imprisoned in Iran’s Evin Prison, on charges of “soft overthrowing” and cooperation with the United States by the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to several sources, including a blog maintained by the Iranian Political Prisoners Association and the online publication Rooz, Ehsani was seized by Iranian authorities in July of last year during his own wedding and has been detained in solitary confinement for much of the past eight months. He faces up to three years imprisonment, and it is not clear from the sources whether he has been allowed to see either his lawyer or his family.

As reported in Rooz, prior to his arrest, Ehsani had been working on a documentary about Iranian music for the Asia Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both based in New York City, as part of a cultural exchange program arranged in concert with Iran’s Cultural Heritage ‎Organization and Iran Tourism Organization; the screening was to have taken place last October in New York. Earlier in 2008, Ehsani had introduced a group of Iranian documentary makers to a cultural program of the Washington, DC-based Meridian Centre, a nonprofit institution dedicated to public diplomacy and global engagement. But despite the official nature of these visits and exchanges, they constitute the basis of the charges that have been brought against Ehsani and, according to ‎Iran’s intelligence officials, has played a role in what Iranian officials ‎characterize as being efforts for a “soft coup” against the regime.‎

According to the International Documentary FilmFestival Amsterdam (IDFA) website, Ehsani is also a member of the Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Society, and studied English literature at the University of Tabriz. He made his first film, Ball, in 1993, and has since made several award-winning documentaries, including The Lovers; The Victims and AIDS in Iran. In 2007, he received support for Opium in Iran from IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund.

Ehsani’s documentaries deal with critical social issues in Iran. AIDS in Iran and Striking the Strings of the Harp examine illicit drug use in his country, and have also been used as evidence in his legal file by the government.

According to the report in Rooz, Ehsani is one of four individuals who have been detained under the same allegations. The others include Arash Alaei, former director of the International Institute for Education and Research on Pulmonary Disease and Tuberculosis; his brother Kamyar Alaei, Ph.D. candidate in health sciences and a Harvard University graduate; and Sylvia Hartounian, a reproductive specialist. Sources in Iran claim that all four detainees are subjected to heavy physical and psychological abuse, and the treatment of Ehsani is believed to be particularly harsh because he made a guest appearance on the radio program Voice of America.