Detained on espionage charges in Iran, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian went on trial this week in a closed Tehran courtroom. The Iranian government has not released any justification for its indictment, and it is illegal to release any details of what occurs in closed-door trials. “It [the closed trial] certainly adds to concerns, and it fits, unfortunately, into a pattern of a complete lack of transparency and lack of due process that we’ve seen since Jason was detained,” said a U.S. State Department spokesperson. The trial will resume at some unspecified future date. (The Washington Post, May 26, 2015, by Carol Morello)
Observers think that the lack of evidence has no bearing on Rezaian’s case because he was charged as part of a struggle between hardliners and reformists in the Iranian government. Political experts, relatives of prisoners and former prisoners think that Rezaian’s fate is bound to the struggles and also to “calculations in the estranged relations between Iran and the United States….” (The New York Times, May 27, 2015, by Rick Gladstone with Randal C. Archibold)