U.S. Court Rejects Temporary Release Request for Iranian Spy Suspect

A judge in a Washington court on Tuesday, August 30, rejected the request for temporary release of Majid Ghorbani, a 59-year-old Iranian citizen accused of espionage for Iran. The day before, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, a 38-year-old dual Iranian-American citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, a 59-year-old Iranian citizen, were arrested on charges of 'espionage' for Tehran, including spying on a Jewish center and gathering information on supporters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq. In the first court session, prosecutor Michael Harvey requested a 75-year prison sentence for Ghorbani. Reports indicate that the defendant's lawyer requested the judge to allow temporary release until the trial, considering that his family lives in the U.S. However, Judge Michael Harvey opposed the request for temporary release, stating that due to the espionage charges against him for another country, he could not agree to the defendant's temporary release. The other defendant in this case, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, is set to be tried in a court in Chicago. According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Jesse K. Liu, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (Washington), and Michael McGarrity, head of national security at the FBI, brought charges against the two. The statement noted that Majid Ghorbani attended a Mojahedin-e Khalq rally on September 20, 2017, in New York, took pictures of the rally, and provided them to Ahmadreza Doostdar in exchange for $2,000. The indictment states that Doostdar traveled to California in December to obtain this information from Ghorbani. The statement added that Ghorbani also participated in a Mojahedin-e Khalq conference titled 'Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights and Democracy' in May of this year in Washington, and ten days later, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar contacted him to discuss how to obtain the collected information. Ghorbani is accused of having the task of infiltrating the Mojahedin-e Khalq organization. The indictment states that he traveled to Iran in March and April of this year and provided his information to the authorities of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar is also accused of taking photographs of the security dimensions of an Orthodox Jewish center named 'Chabad Rohr House' in Chicago in 2017. However, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar's lawyer stated to ABC 7 News that 'the charges against Mr. Doostdar are politically motivated and have been raised on the eve of a new approach by the U.S. President against Iran.' In this context, the Chicago Maroon newspaper reported that Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar's brother is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in Islamic Studies. Previously, in 2013, Mansour Arbab-Siar, an Iranian-American who accepted charges of conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the U.S. in a New York court, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.