PD Editorial: Iran holds another hostage

Today marks 445 days in Iranian captivity for Jason Rezaian.

Rezaian, a Bay Area native and the Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran, has now been held one day longer than the 52 Americans taken hostage when Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in 1979.

It is, as the Post said in a statement this week, “a milestone significant in its injustice.”

Rezaian is accused of espionage, but it’s obvious that he’s instead trapped between rival factions in the Iranian government.

Beyond the injustice, there’s a bitter irony here.

Rezaian, a dual citizen who grew up in Mill Valley, set out to show Americans that “Iran is not the boogeyman,” as he told The Press Democrat in 2006. He started traveling to Iran about 15 years ago, writing freelance articles and producing documentaries about life in his father’s homeland and also sharing his insights with students at home. His dispatches for the Post have covered politics and democracy, the staples of foreign reporting, but he also wrote about the lives and culture of ordinary Iranians.

His crime? Authorities have provided no details, though the official Iranian news agency recently quoted a government official as saying that Rezaian was believed to be part of a conspiracy to bring down the government by improving relations between the United States and Iran.

That’s almost laughable.

But there’s nothing funny about Rezaian’s detention. He has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for 15 months, and, as the Post pointed out this week, denied the due process guarantees of Iranian law, including bail and a verdict with a week of trial. Rezaian’s trial, conducted in secret, also a violation of Iranian law, concluded two months ago.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, recently suggest that Rezaian and two other Americans could be swapped for Iranians imprisoned in the United States for violating sanctions. Rezaian isn’t a bargaining chip. Nor is he a spy. He’s an accredited news correspondent, and, as a top U.N. official said, his continued detention “violates basic rules that not only aim to protect journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and others but to guarantee everyone’s right to information.”

Free Jason Rezaian.