Want to read a true story straight out of a spy novel?
It’s about a group of environmental activists recently released from a prison in Iran after spending years of their lives behind bars. They had become targets of a relentless campaign of raids, interrogations, arrests, and torture while fighting to safeguard their country’s wildlife and natural resources.
Let’s journey back to 2018 when the events began to unfold. Over January and February of that year, the intelligence unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards carried out a wave of arrests taking into custody more than a dozen environmental experts on charges related to espionage and national security.
Among those detained were nine individuals associated with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a local non-profit organization mainly focused on the preservation of critically endangered animals, especially the Asiatic Cheetah.
Tragedy struck in mid-February when news emerged of a death in custody. Kavous Seyed-Emami, one of the founders of PWHF was announced dead while being held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison.
Iran’s judiciary claimed Seyed-Emami had taken his own life given the evidence against him in the espionage case. Family and friends close to Seyed-Emami have denied the allegations and believe them to be categorically false.
“It all happened very fast without any basis, explanation, reason or logic,” says Mehran Seyed-Emami, the conservationist’s son from his home in Canada.
“They arrested my father, and then for two weeks, we were left in complete darkness until they told us he had committed suicide,” adds Seyed-Emami.
“We obviously didn’t believe this absurd claim from the very first second,” he adds.
Authorities accused the wildlife researchers of using environmental projects such as placing cameras to track the Asiatic Cheetah as a pretext to collect information on Iran’s strategic areas for foreign spy agencies such as the CIA and Israel’s Mossad.
Then a high-ranking military official told reporters the “spies” had been using “undercover” lizards which could “attract atomic waves” to gather intel on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
According to scientists calling both assertions “ridiculous”, placing camera traps for wildlife detection is global standard practice and lizards don’t have “special abilities” to detect “uranium” or any other radioactive material for that matter.
A couple of months later, a panel including the ministers of justice, interior, and intelligence, as well as legal representatives from the president’s office concluded the detainees had not committed any wrongdoing and there was no evidence to suggest they were spying.
The Nightmare
In early 2018, Morad Tahbaz, Houman Jokar, Amirhossein Khaleghi, Sam Rajabi, Taher Ghadirian, Sepideh Kasahni, Niloufar Bayani, Kavous Seyed-Emami and Abdolreza Kouhpayeh were arrested by intelligence agents working for the powerful Revolutionary Guards in Iran.
Shortly after, Seyed-Emami, a sociology professor and Canadian citizen mysteriously died in prison just over the age of 64. The remaining detainees spent months being tortured in solitary confinement without having the right to a lawyer. In writings sent to Iranian leaders, women conservationists described how interrogators would “threaten execution” and “sexually harass” them on a daily basis.
Some members of the group were charged with “corruption on earth,” a term Iran uses to refer to a range of offences punishable the death. This charge was reduced.
Later on, their families wrote a letter to Judiciary head Ebrahim Raisi at the time, pleading for justice regarding the treatment of their loved ones. According to a source close to the case who has asked to remain anonymous because of sensitivities, none of the pleas were answered.
Mr. Raisi who became Iran’s president in 2021 died in a helicopter crash along with several other passengers this week after suffering a “hard landing” in “foggy” weather conditions in Northern Iran, state media reported.
Going back again to November 2019, the conservationists were sentenced to terms ranging from four to ten years on charges of “collaborating” and “colluding” with “enemy countries” of Israel and the United States. The rulings were upheld two years after the arrests.
An Iran-focused human rights group said the detainees were forced to confess against themselves while threatened with the “injection of hallucinogenic drugs” and “capture and killing” of parents and siblings.
“There were moments when I thought I may not make it out alive, but my instinct to survive kept me going,” says Morad Tahbaz, co-founder of PWHF and the first person to be arrested.
“All I had were my thoughts, and even those were constantly interrupted by harsh sessions of interrogation,” says Tahbaz in an exclusive interview after spending more than five years behind bars.
In September 2023, Mr. Tahbaz, an Iranian-British-American businessman was released under a Qatar-brokered deal with the US in return for the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets and prisoner swaps. Incidentally, Iran has a long history of jailing dual nationals and using them as leverage and political pawns.
“Although it was beyond my control, my being held hostage by the Islamic Republic of Iran was in all probability the reason why my colleagues were kept imprisoned until after I had been exchanged with the United States,” Tahbaz says.
“I will always feel guilty for their becoming hostages tied to my fate as a hostage. The injustice and damage done to us and the community of environmentalists in Iran is beyond quantification,” adds Tahbaz now 68 years old and living in Connecticut.
Between 2020 and 2023, three of the Iranian conservationists were released, some serving their full prison sentences. Last month in April, the final four were freed as part of a pardon, bringing the nightmare to an end.
The Crossfire
The 2018 crackdown on environmentalists occurred during a power struggle between the hardline factions of Iran’s political system and then President Hassan Rouhani’s administration.
During Rouhani’s term in office in 2015, Iran had entered into a deal with world powers to limit its sensitive nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions. Foreigners and expatriates saw the agreement as a sign that Iran was ready to reengage with the international community after decades of isolation.
However, Iran’s intelligence apparatus viewed this as a threat to their control and began arresting individuals working for organizations, they deemed suspicious, including charitable and environmental ones, instilling fear in anyone wanting to participate in future advocacy.
Everyone knows “supporting the work of those defending the environment is vital, and threats and violence against them, including imprisonment, impacts their human rights and prevents them from doing their important work,” says Astrid Puentes, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
“States and non-state actors should contribute to guarantee that the defense of the environment can be done safely,” Puentes adds.
In Iran, one example of this breach is the arrest and incarceration of members of PWHF who were caught in the crossfire of a rivalry between moderates and conservatives each vying for political influence.
Another one is the case of Kaveh Madani, a Western-educated academic wooed away from a tenured professorship in London to serve as deputy head of Iran’s Environment Department under Mr. Rouhani in 2017.
Since arriving in Tehran, Mr. Madani, a renowned water expert, was interrogated and arrested many times by the IRGC intelligence officials accusing him of spying for the CIA, MI6, and Mossad.
Calling him a “water terrorist”, authorities claimed Madani was involved in “manipulating the weather” to “create droughts” and disrupt Iran’s agriculture sector for the benefit of foreign countries.
In February 2018 as news was breaking that Seyed-Emami had died, Madani was also detained but he was released in a few days and returned to work. More than a month later, after facing multiple threats to his safety from hardliners, while on a diplomatic mission abroad, Madani decided not to go back to Iran from a business trip.
He officially resigned from his post in April 2018.
“The way I see it, there are two scenarios had I stayed in Iran,” says Madani from his home in Canada.
“In the best case, I would have been released from prison alongside the other environmental activists,” says Madani.
“In the worst case, I could have been buried deep in the ground for a crime I didn’t commit. Just like Kavous Seyed-Emami, whose absence is felt more profoundly than ever today,” he adds.
Fast forwarding to more than six years later, authorities have not been able to produce evidence against any of the activists featured in this story.
Iran’s top environmental officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Legends Never Die
One of the first acts of the environmentalists after reuniting was to visit the grave of Kavous Seyed-Emami buried in Ammameh, a village close to the capital Tehran.
On 10 April, images emerged showing the wildlife experts paying their respects to their former colleague and mentor who lost his life while being held in prison. Morad Tahbaz, who worked and travelled with Seyed-Emami after starting PWHF in 2008, also expressed sadness in a phone interview from the US and away from the group.
“Kavous was a true nature enthusiast and an all-around wonderful human being with an incredible zest for life that I have seen in few others,” says Tahbaz.
“I lost a great friend, his wife and children a wonderful husband and father and Iran a true patriot who passionately cared about the country’s environment and nature,” adds Tahbaz.
“I miss him greatly,” he says.
For many in the environmental community including his family, the release of the PWHF members brought back memories of Seyed-Emami’s dedication to nature and to his birthplace, Iran.
“My dad was like a tree. Trees give life, give food, give shelter, give beauty, and give balance to their surrounding ecosystem,” says Mehran Seyed-Emami.
“My dad is abundant and continues to breathe life into the world, even after death,” says Seyed-Emami.
“This is his legacy,” he adds.
Any Hope For Nature
Various global environmental and human rights organizations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other influential bodies expressed their relief when the final activists were freed in April, raising awareness regarding their longlasting plight.
Inger Anderson, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, issued a statement in English and Farsi, welcoming the release of all conservationists, including Niloufar Bayani, a Columbia University graduate and former UNEP employee.
We owe “a debt of gratitude to a few international leaders whose efforts and support in this case were present from the start,” says Kaveh Madani now director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
“This is how silenced voices get heard around the world,” he adds.
But prison didn’t stop the activists from fighting for the environment. Last year, Niloufar Bayani and Sepideh Kashani, petitioned an open letter stating their concerns about the escalating threat of climate change and the lack of inaction towards it.
According to friends who spent time with them behind bars, both women were teaching other inmates about climate change and the importance of preserving Iran’s wildlife.
There are thought to be less than 30 critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs living in Iran. In 2023, a cheetah cub named Pirouz known as the symbol of innocence among Iranians died due to reported kidney failure and lack of access to the right medical equipment, creating questions about Iran’s ability to save the world’s fastest animals from near extinction.
Several other cheetahs have been killed in road accidents partly because of bad fencing in protected areas and poor monitoring, a major concern for the survival of these one-of-a-kind cats, experts say.
With smaller heads, shorter legs, and stronger necks than African cheetahs, “Asiatic cheetahs are genetically and ecologically unique,” says Luke Hunter, executive director of Big Cats Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“There are no cheetahs quite like them, anywhere else on earth- and Iran should be proud of being the only country where they have not been lost,” adds Hunter.
“However, their situation is now perilous,” he adds.
“Iran has a major opportunity to reinvigorate its cheetah conservation efforts, but that window is very rapidly closing,” adds Hunter.
So, is there hope for nature? That remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, anyone who cares about Iran’s wildlife will be sleeping easier at night knowing that the conservationists are now free to protect them.
“These innocent people paid the heavy price of death and imprisonment for advocating for Iran’s environment,” says Madani.
“Their sacrifice will never be forgotten and will remain in our minds as the most impactful activism for the conservation of Asiatic Cheetahs,” says Madani.
“Their names and their legacy will forever be entwined with the Asiatic Cheetah,” he adds.
The end.
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