The Guardian Weekly (2022-01-14)

The Guardian Weekly 14 January 2022

28 Spotlight

Middle East

S

ix years ago on New Year’s

Day, an Iranian-Austrian IT

businessman said goodbye to

his wife and three children and

boarded a fl ight from Vienna to Tehran

via Istanbul. Kamran Ghaderi had been

due to return fi ve or six days later, but

he was arrested and has spent six years

in Evin prison in Tehran.

In October 2016, he was sentenced to

10 years for spying for a foreign country

at a trial during which neither he nor

his lawyer were able to say more than

two words. His sentencing was based

on a confession he gave under what

his wife, Harika, says was torture, in

his belief she might be in danger. No

written judgment has ever been given

to his family.

“The eff ect on our three children –

that is the most painful aspect of this

story,” says Harika in an interview. “I

cannot comfort them. My daughters

were nine and 12 years old. Now they

are 15 and 18. Our boy was two years

old and now he is eight. He does not

remember his father .”

Harika lost weight until she became

“a skeleton”, and despite taking pills

found it diffi cult to sleep for more than

two hours at a stretch.

On this harrowing anniversary, she

recalls every aspect of her husband’s

disappearance. Before he left, there had

been no reason to be wary. Ghaderi – who

had left Iran in 1983 to study electrical

engineering in Vienna – was not a

political activist. He had been on many

business trips across the Middle East as

an IT consultant and, in 2015, after the

Iran nuclear deal, he went on an offi cial

Austrian business delegation to Tehran

led by the then Austrian president Heinz

Fischer. Relations were on the up.

Normally on his trips to Tehran he

stayed with his elderly mother. Harika

says: “ On the fi rst day I do not usually

call him because he has a lot of meetings,

so I normally wait a day. This time when

I spoke with his mother she said, ‘No,

he is not here’, so that was a big shock.

“I fi rst thought he might have had

a heart attack on the plane. It was not

a direct fl ight but there was a transit

in Istanbul, so I rang the airport in

Istanbul and asked if he could be in a

hospital. The airport said they had no

such information ... It was a Sunday

and all the travel agencies were closed

so I drove to the airport, and said I have

to know whether he was on the fl ight

from Istanbul to Tehran or not. They

said they would not give information

to a third party, and I was screaming

and shouting. I was not myself.

“ All kinds of things were in my mind,

but I never ever had the thought that he

had been arrested by the government.

The next day his brother went to

Tehran airport and was told he had

been arrested and taken from there.

We did not know who had arrested

him, or for what reason. One and a

half months after his arrest, the Revo-

lutionary Guard s allowed him to call

me, and he was allowed to say, ‘I am

alive. Take care of yourself and the chil-

dren.’ I asked him what had happened

and – he was crying – he said he was not

allowed to tell me.

“Three months later, his mother

received a call and was told she could

visit him. Th e visit so aff ected her that

she had to be driven to hospital with

high blood pressure. He had lost 16 k g

and he told her under pressure he had

signed two confessions.”

Harika finds it painful that her

husband is still in jail, innocent, and

cut off from his family, save a daily

phone call, while the Austrian for-

eign ministry has , since April, hosted

an Iranian government delegation in

Vienna to discuss the future of the

country’s nuclear deal.

It is perhaps not a coincidence

that French, German, British and US

dual nationals are held by Iran, their

countries being among the signato-

ries to the stalled nuclear deal, but

the detention of Ghaderi and another

dual national, Massud Mossaheb ,

the secretary of the Austro-Iranian

Society, is a puzzle.

Harika explains: “I have come to

realise this was a business for Iran, so my

question to the Austrian ministry was

‘why him, what do they want in return

for Kamran?’ It may not be something

directly from Austria but from the EU.”

Either way, the Austrian govern-

ment has taken the softest of approaches

to his plight, insisting quiet diplomacy

is the best solution.

Looking through the public

comments of the Austrian foreign

ministry, it is hard to know that two

of its citizens have been arbitrarily

detained. The foreign minister, Alexan-

der Schallenberg , has met Harika only

once, when he was, she says , very kind,

but meetings between the hostage fam-

ilies and the ministry are rare.

The irony is that Iran is mounting

a campaign asking Iranian citizens

abroad to return to their country to

work. Perhaps, looking at Ghaderi’s

family, few in the diaspora will be

rushing for a fl ight back to Tehran.

PATRICK WINTOUR IS DIPLOMATIC

EDITOR FOR THE GUARDIAN

Harika

Ghaderi with her

husband, Kamran

COURTESY OF THE

GHADERI FAMILY

IRAN

The mystery

of Austria’s

silence over

dual citizens

held in Iran

By Patrick Wintour Disagreement

In an open letter

to the Austrian

foreign ministry

in April, the

families of the two

detained citizens

wrote: “You do not

publicly request

their release, nor

do you publicly

acknowledge the

injustice, torture

and illegality of

their imprisonment.

After years of

continuing to

rely on ‘silent

diplomacy’, we

interpret this

either as a sign of

resignation, a lack

of commitment

or a lack of will to

consider alternative

strategies.”