Report: UAlbany student in Iran may be freed

A University at Albany doctoral student that was convicted of trying to overthrow the Iranian government may soon be free on an appeal, according to a report in The Boston Globe.
Kamiar Alaei was charged with speaking with an “enemy government” in Iranian court in trying to overcome the government, but Shafie believes their appeal may be successful because the U.S. is not at war with Iran and therefore is not an enemy government.
“Their case is very hopeful,’’ Alaei’s attorney Masoud Shafie told The Globe.
Alaei, who had completed one year of coursework in UAlbany’s Doctorate of Public Health program, was detained in Iran in June 2008 and convicted to three years in an Iranian prison in January 2009 along with his brother, Arash, who received a six-year sentence, and two others.
“They were linked to the CIA, backed by the U.S. government and State Department … They recruited and trained people to work with different espionage networks to launch a velvet overthrow of the Iranian government,” Iranian Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza told the Islamic Republican News Agency last year.
The Alaeis were held for six months without being presented with a charge, according to the Iranian Fars News Agency. The brothers were both well-known AIDS doctors that had opened clinics throughout Iran, and one of them allegedly confessed to the crime under duress after being held in solitary confinement, sources told the Physicians for Human Rights, a group that has petitioned for the brothers’ release.
A petition to free the Alaeis was set up by the human rights group and is available at iranfreethedocs.org.
The brothers have been held at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. In 2004, they were the subject of a BBC documentary for their work with Iranian heroin addicts who had contracted HIV.
Before being detained, Kamiar Alaei was expected to return to UAlbany for the fall 2008 semester. He had received a master’s degree in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.