Prominent Iranian jailed by FBI: Demand her freedom

Minneapolis, MN – A well-known Iranian journalist, Marzieh Hashemi, has been jailed by the FBI. Hashemi is an anchor on Iran’s English language Press TV and has interviewed many progressive U.S. activists. According to credible reports, Hashemi was taken into custody at the Saint Louis, Missouri area’s Louis Lambert International Airport on January 13. The FBI has since moved her to a detention facility near Washington DC.

There is no indication that Hashemi has been charged with anything.

Hashemi, who was born in the United States but resides in Iran, was on a visit to family members, including a brother who is ill.

According to her family, Hashemi is being mistreated at the detention facility, where she is manacled, given meals of pork which she cannot eat, and has had her hijab taken away.

Joe Iosbaker, a leader of Chicago Freedom Road Socialist Organization states, “Marzieh is a journalist that has interviewed me in the past, about the U.S. war in Syria, and about the FBI witch hunt against the Anti-War 23 that started in 2010. Born and raised in the U.S., she’s my age, and like me, was politicized as a college student by the struggle of the Iranian people against the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in the late 1970s. She visits her daughter and grandchildren here in the U.S. regularly. Her arrest is an act of political repression. We demand she be released immediately.”