Tehran urges US to free Iranian inmates

Tehran on Tuesday renewed its call on Washington to free the innocent Iranian inmates imprisoned in the US jails, reminding Iran's good will gesture in releasing the three American nationals, Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who were detained on spying charges after crossing Iran-Iraq borders illegally in 2009. "I advise the Americans to renounce violence against the Iranian nation and release the innocent Iranian nationals and avoid repeating this incorrect method," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said here in Tehran on Tuesday. He referred to the freedom of the three US nationals - one several months ago and the other two earlier this month - and reminded the US officials that Tehran agreed with their demand for holding an appeal court and even turned their detention decree into freedom on bail. Mehman-Parast called on Washington to reciprocate Tehran's goodwill gesture and release the Iranian nationals jailed in the US, including Amir Hossein Ardebili and Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan. He further recommended the US officials to show more respect for humanitarian issues and stop making an instrumental use of human rights for the sake of political games. More than 60 Iranian nationals are being held in US prisons, 11 of them on political grounds and without any proof or evidence. Among the Iranian prisoners in the United States are Amir Hossein Ardebili, extradited to the US by Georgia, and Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan, arrested under false charges. A US District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, handed out a five-year term to Ardebili based on the prosecutor's claim that he had "secretly pleaded guilty" to arms smuggling and weapons export charges. Shahrzad was arrested in the US in December 2007 after being forced to return to the United States from a vacation in Cyprus. Her former husband, Mahmoud Seif, had allegedly tried to export night-vision goggles to Iran from Austria. However, she was detained and sentenced to five years in prison by a Florida federal court in the absence of her husband. In November, Melika and Melina Mir-Qolikhan, the teenage twin daughters of the innocent Iranian woman, along with their grandmother Rowshan, appeared on the Iranian English language press tv channel and asked Obama to release their innocent mother. Shahrzad's mother has also unveiled new details about abuse, torture and cruel treatment of her daughter by the US prison guards and jailors, stressing that her daughter is held against the law since her retrial in the US violated the international and US laws. Belqeis Rowshan said in an interview with FNA at the time that her daughter was initially sentenced to 52 days of imprisonment by an Austrian court in 2005 and her case was closed after she served her prison term. "Again and after a short period, a US court sentenced Shahrzad to five years of imprisonment for the same case, while based on the international laws courts are not allowed to issue two (consecutive) rulings for a single case," Rowshan stated. "That means that the US action on the case was wrong in essence and they know this," she stressed, reminding that her family attorney also confirm her words.