TEHRAN, April 20 (UPI) -- Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian has been charged in Iran with four crimes, including espionage, which could carry a 20-year prison sentence.
Rezaian, 38, has been held in Iran's Evin Prison since July 22 after security forces raided his home in Tehran. He and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, both journalists, were arrested.
Martin Baron , executive editor of The Washington Post, released a statement:
"The grave charges against Jason that Iran has now disclosed could not be more ludicrous. It is absurd and despicable to assert, as Iran's judiciary is now claiming, that Jason's work first as a freelance reporter and then as The Post's Tehran correspondent amounted to espionage or otherwise posed any threat to Iranian national security. Jason is an accredited journalist whose fairness and professionalism have earned him public praise even from Iran's president and Iran's foreign minister. Whatever its motive, Iran's judiciary is presenting the claims that are transparently baseless," he wrote.
Related
Rezaian, an Iranian-American citizen, was allowed to hire a lawyer in March after seven months of imprisonment, but it was not the lawyer he wanted.
Rezaian's family are working to lodge a formal lawsuit against various Iranian media organizations. Fars news agency, affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard and other hardline media outlets, have been building a a media case against Rezaian with unattributed accusations stating that Rezaian worked as a spy while reporting to The Washington Post from Tehran.
Fars recently reported that Rezaian provided economic and industrial data to the U.S. government. Claims denied by Rezaian's family and the Post.
Charges on Rezaian include conducting propaganda against the establishment, collaborating with hostile governments and collecting information about internal and foreign policy and providing them to individuals with malicious intent.
"If there is any hint of light in Iran's levying of these chilling charges, it is that Iran's accusations against Jason will soon be heard in the court of public opinion and also in a court of law, albeit in a Revolutionary Court before a judge whose unfairness has already earned him sanctions from the European Community for violations of human rights," Baron wrote.
