{"id":4916,"date":"2016-06-10T00:04:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T05:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=4916"},"modified":"2016-06-10T00:04:44","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T05:04:44","slug":"phd-student-imprisoned-for-refusing-to-be-an-intelligence-informant-in-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/2016\/06\/10\/phd-student-imprisoned-for-refusing-to-be-an-intelligence-informant-in-belgium\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD Student Imprisoned for refusing to be an Intelligence informant in Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"amid<\/a>
amid Babaei imprisoned in Ghohar dasht notorious Prison following a trial that lasted less than 10 minutes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JUNE 8, 2016- According to the reports, Hamid Babaei, a PhD student incarcerated for nearly three years in Ghohar dasht notorious Prison following a trial that lasted less than 10 minutes, has been denied his rights to conditional release and furlough (temporary leave granted to most of Iran\u2019s inmates). Babaei has also been suffering from severe gum disease and other dental problems in prison, but the authorities have ignored his need for proper medical treatment, an informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cHamid and his family have requested furlough numerous times but the prosecutor has refused, not even allowing a short furlough on medical grounds so that Hamid could get treatment at a hospital,\u201d said the source.<\/p>\n

Babaei has consistently said that he was imprisoned for refusing to operate as an informant in Belgium, where he was completing his PhD as a foreign student, for Iran\u2019s Intelligence Ministry. During his first trial, Babaei was represented by a court-appointed public defender that was mostly silent and did not offer any defense on behalf of his client, said the source.<\/p>\n

Babaei\u2019s lawyer initially advised him to confess to the charges laid against him, but Babaei maintained that he was being penalized for refusing to cooperate with the Intelligence Ministry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not realize that the moment I walked into the Intelligence Ministry would be the last time we would ever be together and that we would be caught in a bitter scenario,\u201d wrote Babaei in a letter to his wife following his arrest in August 2013. \u201cNeither of us deserved this fate in any way.\u201d
\n\u201cHow I wish we had never come back [to Iran] and this painful tragedy had never happened so I would not be staring at Iran\u2019s sky through barbed wire every day,\u201d he said.
\nBabaei\u2019s wife, Kobra Parsajou, was arrested in September 2014 for speaking to the media about her husband\u2019s condition and handed a suspended six-month prison sentence.
\nFamily members of political prisoners are frequently warned that they will be punished if they speak to the media about the cases.
\nBabaei, 32, has served two years and 10 months of his six-year prison sentence, which qualifies him for conditional release.
\nBabaei was pursuing his PhD in finance at the University of Li\u00e8ge in Belgium when he was arrested on August 13, 2013 during a visit to Iran to see his family.
\nBabaei was held in solitary confinement for 20 days in Evin Prison <\/a>\u2019s Ward 240 and 15 days in Ward 209\u2014both security wards. He was subsequently transferred to General Ward 350 on September 18, 2013.
\nDuring his arrest he was repeatedly interrogated without any access to a lawyer or contact with his family.
\nAccording to the report, on December 21, 2013, during a trial that lasted less than 10 minutes, Judge Mohammad Moghisseh of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Babaei to six years in prison with an additional four-year suspended prison term for \u201cspying and contact with enemy states.\u201d The Appeals Court upheld the ruling.
\nBabaei, who received his masters in mathematics with honors from the Science and Industry University in Tehran in 2008, was permitted by the Judiciary to visit a dentist outside prison to be treated for severe gum disease on a couple of occasions, but for unspecified reasons the prison authorities did not allow Babaei to attend the appointments even though his family had paid for them.
\nAmnesty International as well as the Iranian community in Belgium have strongly condemned Babaei\u2019s arrest and conviction and called for his immediate release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUNE 8, 2016- According to the reports, Hamid Babaei, a PhD student incarcerated for nearly three years in Ghohar dasht notorious Prison following a trial […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4918,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions\/4918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}