Last night I got the bad news I’ve been fearing since the election unrest in Iran began: Kian has been arrested. Intelligence agents came to his home in Tehran and took him away; we don’t even know where he is being held. I am very worried about him, and my heart goes out to his family. The last email he sent me, a couple of weeks ago, promised baby pictures–I’m praying he’ll be home playing with his daughter soon. His legal status from the last case is still unresolved. Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian journalist I became acquainted with as a result of efforts on Kian’s behalf during his prior imprisonment, is also being detained in Iran and was forced to make a televised false confession.
The NYT’s Lede blog (scroll down) has excerpts from Kian’s contributions to a recent roundtable about Obama’s speech to to Muslim world, and some background on his and Haleh’s detentions back in 2007.
I cut short my week in Syria (which up until last night, was one of the happiest weeks of recent years) and am headed back to İstanbul tomorrow to see if there’s anything I can do.
