Kavous Seyed Emami, University Professor, Died in Prison Two Weeks After Arrest

Simultaneously with the announcement by the Tehran Public Prosecutor regarding the arrest of several suspects linked to a "spying case in the environmental sector," reports indicate that Kavous Seyed Emami, a university professor and environmental activist, died in prison two weeks after his arrest. According to Mr. Seyed Emami's son, in a call made by prison officials to the family, it was stated that he had "committed suicide" in prison. On Saturday, February 10, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi announced that several suspects had been arrested who, according to him, were "collecting classified information in strategic areas under the guise of conducting scientific and environmental projects." He did not mention the identity or number of those arrested, only stating that a security agency had identified and arrested them. The Tehran prosecutor also did not refer to the death of one of the detainees in prison. On the same day, Ramin Seyed Emami, Kavous Seyed Emami's son, announced on his Twitter account that his father had died in prison two weeks after his arrest, and prison authorities had also declared the cause as "suicide." Kavous Seyed Emami held a PhD in sociology and was a faculty member at the Imam Sadiq University’s Faculty of Islamic Knowledge and Political Science. He was also the CEO of the "Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation." Mr. Seyed Emami's son tweeted that his father was arrested on January 24 and that "suddenly my mother, Maryam Momeni, was summoned from the prosecutor's office on February 10, 2018, and informed of her husband's death. They said he had committed suicide... I still can't believe it, we can't believe it." According to information published by Imam Sadiq University about Kavous Seyed Emami on its website, this environmental activist studied at universities in the United States and obtained his PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1991. In recent years, in addition to teaching at Imam Sadiq University, he had published nine books and dozens of articles in various fields. Furthermore, the London-based Kayhan newspaper published more details about the identities of the detainees in a report released on Friday. In addition to Kavous Seyed Emami, two other colleagues from the "Wildlife Heritage" foundation, Hooman Jokar, the Asian cheetah project manager, and Morad Tahbaz, an environmental and cultural heritage activist, have also been arrested. According to Kayhan London, Mr. Tahbaz holds dual Iranian-American citizenship and has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and fine arts and a master's degree in business management from the United States. Kayhan London identified another detainee as Niloufar Bayani, Hooman Jokar's wife and a former UN Environment Program advisor. The newspaper added that "the detainees have not been allowed to meet with their family members and are deprived of the right to have a lawyer. Additionally, the homes of the board members of the 'Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation' have been searched, and their communication devices and computers have been confiscated. The homes of relatives and friends of these environmental activists have also been searched and inspected." The arrests occurred after the Tasnim news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards, criticized Morad Tahbaz's presence at a strategic cheetah committee meeting at the country's Environmental Protection Organization on November 20, labeling him an "international businessman" who "besides construction in the United States and the Zionist regime, has also managed and developed casinos in America." The Islamic Republic of Iran occasionally announces the arrest of individuals on charges of espionage for foreign countries, especially the United States and Israel. One of the most controversial cases in recent months has been that of Ahmadreza Jalali, an Iranian researcher residing in Sweden, who has been imprisoned since May 25 last year on charges of "espionage" and "collaboration with an enemy government." Mr. Jalali has been sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary, and recently the Supreme Court rejected his appeal for a retrial. On February 27 of this year, the Tehran prosecutor also reported that a suspect in espionage had been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Mr. Dolatabadi, without mentioning the identity of this individual, stated that he "in the electricity industry... established connections with foreign intelligence systems and held at least 14 meetings with Mossad intelligence officers, providing them with much information related to the country's electricity and nuclear industry in exchange for 140,000 euros." The report regarding the death of one of the environmental activists, just two weeks after their arrest, comes at a time when reports have emerged about the deaths of some detainees in detention centers following the mass protests in December of this year, with some members of parliament even warning of the possibility of a "second Kahrizak." While human rights sources report that the number of these individuals is between three and five, judicial officials have only confirmed the deaths of two detainees, attributing the cause to "suicide." During a recent visit by a group of parliament members to Evin prison, it was announced that a video of "Sina Ghanbari's suicide" was shown to them, and later a parliament member reported that the head of forensic medicine confirmed reports about the "suicide" of two of the protesters in prison. Earlier, 40 Iranian parliament members had written a letter to the head of the legislative branch requesting the formation of an independent committee to investigate the causes of death of some of the detainees from the recent mass protests, although no decision has yet been announced in this regard. Amnesty International also issued a statement calling for an immediate investigation into this matter, emphasizing that the Iranian authorities must take "all necessary measures" to protect the lives of detainees. In recent years, other reports of deaths or killings of detainees in Iranian prisons have emerged, including the deaths of individuals such as Sattar Beheshti, Hadi Saber, Mohsen Rouhalamini, Mohammad Kamrani, Amir Javadi Far, Ramin Aghazadeh Ghahremani, Zahra Kazemi, Zahra Bani-Yaghoubi, Akbar Mohammadi, and Omidreza MirSiyafi.