Tehran charges 3 with U.S. ties with espionage

TEHRAN, Iran - Three Iranian Americans, including U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari, have been charged with endangering national security and espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman said yesterday.

The charges, which relatives and colleagues denied, were another example of Iran's stepped-up accusations that Washington was trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government.

Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters: "Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners. . . . The complainant is the Intelligence Ministry."

He said that Esfandiari, 67, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, had been informed of the charges but did not say when. She has been held at Tehran's Evin Prison since early May.

Her husband, Shaul Bakhash, said the allegations were "totally without foundation."

"I think it certainly ratchets up the case against her several notches in a rather menacing way, and is therefore very worrisome," Bakhash said from their home in Potomac, Md.

Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Wilson Center, said Esfandiari's detention was "an affront to the rule of law and common decency."

"The Wilson Center's message to the Iranian government is simple: Let Haleh go," he said in a statement.

Jamshidi said the same charges had been lodged against Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban-planning consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute, and Parnaz Azima, a journalist. No trial date has been announced, and Jamshidi said the investigation against all three was continuing.

Yesterday's announcement was the first time the government confirmed the arrest of Tajbakhsh, who also has worked for the World Bank and was believed to have been taken into custody about May 11, according to the New York-based Open Society Institute. Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, was detained but released and barred from leaving the country.

Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for the institute, said it was "dismayed at the charges" against Tajbakhsh, an "internationally respected scholar."

"The charges are completely without merit," Silber said by telephone. "We are very concerned for Dr. Tajbakhsh's safety and urge the Iranian authorities to release him immediately."

In Washington, the State Department said it had no information about the lodging of any formal charges but urged the detainees' release. "They certainly pose no threat or challenge to the regime," deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry has accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a "soft revolution" in Iran, along the lines of the revolutions that ended communist rule in Eastern Europe. The ministry alleges that the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy, was part of the conspiracy.

The Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute have denied the allegations.

Esfandiari had been trapped in Iran since visiting her 93-year-old mother in December, when three masked men with knives stole her luggage and passport as she headed to the airport to leave, the Wilson Center said. In the weeks before her arrest, she was called in for questioning daily, it said.