Yesterday, an action alert went out on Facebook groups and e-lert lists: Call the Iranian mission to the UN now. Tell them to free Doctors Arash Alaei and Kamiar Alaei. Iran has held these two brothers, who are world-renowned HIV/AIDS physicians, largely incommunicado since late June. On New Year's Eve, after six months of detention and interrogation, the prosecutor trotted them before the court for a one-day, summary trial in which he announced that there were secret charges against them. But the brothers' attorney could not examine the accuracy or relevance of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the evidence is a secret, too. A verdict is expected as soon as Saturday.
What's not a secret is that the Iranian mission to the UN's phone number is +1 212-687-2020. What's right out in the open, on Nature blog, on ScienceBlogs, and the front page of the Albany Times Union, is that phones are ringing at the Iranian UN Mission, and have been since the action alert went out yesterday. Call now and say Iran, Free the Docs: +1 212-687-2020.
On behalf of Physicians for Human Rights, I spoke today with Nature's senior correspondent Declan Butler, who wrote:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since their arrest last June (see Nature story, subscription required). Kamiar, the younger of the brothers, holds a master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and was to have resumed doctoral studies at the University of Albany's School of Public Health in New York. Arash, former head of international education and research cooperation at the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, runs a clinic in Tehran. The brothers are not thought to have been politically active.
Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for the [Cambridge, Massachusetts]-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), points out that the six-month detention itself breached human rights, as it was "largely incommunicado." Moreover, whereas Iranian law forbids anyone to be held in detention for longer than four months without charges being brought, it only filed the charge of communicating with an "enemy government" in early December.
At the trial, the prosecution also indicted the men on new secret charges. The trial denied the men the right to defend themselves against the new accusations and the right to due process, says Hutson. "The trial was unfair even by the draconian standards of Iran's penal code," he says.
In August, the prosecutor publicly accused the men of fomenting a velvet revolution, arguing that they had collaborated with other scientists around the world, including some in the United States, attended international AIDS conferences, and met frequently with AIDS NGOs. "Those are not crimes, that's good medicine," says Hutson, adding that it has casts a chilling effect on academic collaboration between Iran and the rest of the world. In December, the US National Academies suspended visits to Iran after the temporary detention of one of its officials in Tehran (Nature).
Several human-rights organizations, including PHR and Amnesty International, have called on Iran to allow the men access to lawyers and the right to contest their detention before a judge. The call has been taken up by several scientific bodies, including the International AIDS Society, the Foundation for AIDS Research and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and thousands of scientists and physicians have signed an online petition.
Health care professionals mounted an aggressive phone-in campaign
Paul Grondahl of the Albany Times-Union writes:
With tacit approval of the government, the brothers openly operated AIDS clinics in Iran that focused on treating I.V. drug users. Their work has been widely praised by humanitarian groups and is the subject of a BBC documentary.
Dr. Kamiar Alaei had completed one year of a two-year doctoral program at UAlbany, where students and faculty have joined efforts to free the brothers.
Health care professionals mounted an aggressive phone-in campaign this week to the Iranian mission at the U.N. and more than 4,000 people from 85 countries have signed a petition calling for the doctors' release at http://www.iranfreethedocs.org.
There's time now to call and make a difference. The one-day trial has been held, but a verdict has not been announced. No one knows how severe a sentence the brothers might face, if convicted on these secret charges based on undisclosed evidence from faceless accusers. What is known is that making a call is making a difference. Call now. Tell Iran to free the docs. The Iranian Mission to the UN would like to hear from you (not really). But do call anyway and tell them that a fair trial is one where the defendant knows the charges, hears the evidence and has the opportunity to confront the accusers.