Iranian Arrested in Kenya: Israel Has Fabricated a Case Against Us

The news site Rajanews has released an audio file of a conversation with one of the Iranians arrested in Kenya, in which the detainee accuses Israel of 'fabricating a case' against them but confirms 'filming around the Israeli embassy' in Kenya. Nasrollah Ebrahimi and Abdolhossein Safaei, two Iranians identified as 'university professors and lawyers,' were arrested last week in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. They were tried by a court in Kenya for filming the Israeli embassy. In the audio file released by Rajanews, Mr. Ebrahimi attributes the filming of 'around the Israeli embassy' to 'one of his colleagues' but denies the terrorist accusations against himself, stating that the arrest of him and Abdolhossein Safaei 'is unacceptable from the perspective of human rights and the rights of advocacy.' Nasrollah Ebrahimi introduces himself as 'a professor at Tehran University and a faculty member of the Faculty of Law and Political Science' and confirms that he and Mr. Safaei traveled to Kenya to follow up on the case of two other Iranians who are imprisoned on terrorist charges. Mr. Ebrahimi did not provide an explanation for why they were filming the Israeli embassy in Nairobi but stated, 'They arrested us in front of the Israeli embassy while we were in a diplomatic vehicle and our driver was the embassy's driver.' This Iranian detainee in Kenya said that the Kenyan government used 'anti-terrorist police' instead of diplomatic police for their arrest and that 'the Israelis escorted us to the security center here with local security forces.' Nasrollah Ebrahimi stated that 'the Israelis took our laptops, took our phones, and took all our clients' documents... while among our belongings we have information about our clients that is confidential.' According to this Iranian prisoner in Kenya, he and his colleague are under 'heavy psychological torture' but did not specify how he managed to establish phone contact with Iran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry had previously called for the immediate release of Nasrollah Ebrahimi and Abdolhossein Safaei. In recent years, Kenya has arrested and imprisoned several Iranians on terrorist charges, such as attempting to bomb in the country.