Siamak Namazi's Account of Iran's 'Child Selling' for a Handful of Dollars

"In our several thousand years of history, there have been events that are not honorable. For example, a king would blind his son to prevent a coup. But we never had child selling... But now, in the Islamic Republic, it has become a norm." This is what Siamak Namazi says, one year after his release from Evin Prison in the first extensive media interview he gave exclusively to Radio Farda. A year ago, on September 19, 2023, seven American citizens boarded a plane in Tehran that first took them to Qatar. Five of them, who traveled from Doha to the United States, had been imprisoned in Iran, and two stayed to accompany their imprisoned child and spouse in Iran. Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, and Emad Sharqi were three of these Iranian-American prisoners. The Iranian government had agreed with the U.S. to release six billion dollars of its seized assets in exchange for the freedom of these individuals. Based on this agreement, the amount was transferred to an account in Qatar so that Iran could use it to purchase items that Washington had authorized, including medicine and humanitarian goods. On the first anniversary of the release of these individuals, Radio Farda interviewed Siamak Namazi, and for the first time since his release, he spoke about being imprisoned in Evin, his sense of freedom, and his perspective on what he went through. Mr. Namazi was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of collaborating with a hostile government and spent about eight years in Evin Prison. In a letter he wrote in Persian at the time of his release but had not been published, he described his day of freedom, expressing happiness that after eight years of "unjust captivity filled with unbearable harassment and indescribable lawlessness," he was being released, but he was angry that he was imprisoned with a "list of false and baseless accusations" only to be exchanged "for a handful of dollars" under the guise of "humanitarian exchange." The text of Siamak Namazi's letter from September 2023, published for the first time, states that the children of the land of Iran have been reduced to barter goods and slaves! I, Siamak Namazi, born and devoted to the land of Iran, write this letter while joy and anger and sorrow simultaneously fill my being: happy that after eight years of unjust captivity filled with unbearable harassment and indescribable lawlessness, I am free; enraged at the oppressors who imprisoned me with a list of false and baseless accusations only to eventually exchange me for a handful of dollars and brazenly call this inhumane and disgraceful act a "humanitarian exchange"; saddened and choked as I have been driven from my motherland in such a vile and heartless manner. I do not have the capacity to describe what I and my family went through during these excruciating years. I know that it is still a cause for gratitude that my fate, like that of Siamak Shahnameh and Kavous Seyed-Emami and those compatriots who were killed in the streets and above the skies, was not sealed, and the mill of this torturous imprisonment merely turned my hair and eyebrows white and took many of the best years of my life, along with many dreams, away from me. But woe to us that there are oppressors in our land who not only are not ashamed of taking hostages, men and women, old and young of this land, but consider selling our citizens a service to their diplomacy and budget! Woe to all of us who had open eyes and loud voices, but when they reduced the children of this soil to barter goods and slaves, our cries did not tear the sky! Woe to the times of our Iran! O Iran! Although the thoughts and injustices of the bad are not far from you, they could not and cannot remove your love from the hearts of your beloved children. As I pass through your precious borders, I know that sooner or later you will flourish again, and I still hope for the flight of the phoenix of freedom and the shadow of the bird of happiness over your sky. Goodbye, my land! May God protect you from the lies and the lying people-sellers! Siamak Namazi, September 2023. You can listen to or read the complete interview of Radio Farda with Siamak Namazi and his account of eight years of imprisonment in Iran, with the explanation that efforts have been made to preserve Mr. Namazi's Persian tone in the implementation of this interview.