Jewish Iranian-American sentenced to prison in Iran for visiting Israel 13 years ago

A Jewish Iranian-American man has been sentenced to prison in Iran for traveling to Israel 13 years ago for his son’s bar mitzvah, his family members have disclosed.

Kamran Hekmati, 70, of Great Neck, Long Island, which is home to a large Persian Jewish population, traveled to Iran in May for what was supposed to be a brief visit.

But in July, he was detained and sent to Evin prison in Tehran, his relatives told the New York Times, which reported Hekmati’s imprisonment for the first time on Thursday.

The notorious prison was heavily damaged during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June. Directly following the war, Iran arrested 35 members of the Jewish communities in Tehran and Shiraz on charges of having contact with Israel.

It was not clear whether Hekmati was included in that total. But Iranian authorities had realized that he both held an Iranian passport, despite having moved to the United States as a child, and had violated a law barring Iranians from traveling to Israel. (Iran does not recognize dual citizenship.)

In August, he was sentenced to four years in prison by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court. His sentence was reduced to two years in September, and a lawyer for his family has filed an appeal seeking his release on humanitarian grounds because he has cancer, according to the newspaper.

“Kamran was the person who glued the family together. He was always there for everyone, his wife, his kids, all his relatives, anyone he met in Iran,” Hekmati’s cousin, Shohreh Nowfar, told the New York Times. “It’s so ironic that the country he loved so much and tried to help has now imprisoned him.”

Hekmati’s family came to the United States several years before the Iranian Revolution in 1979 caused tens of thousands of Iranian Jews to flee to the United States and Israel. Today, Iran has an estimated 8,000 Jews who are permitted to practice their religion but barred from any contact with Israel or display of support from it.

Hekmati is currently one of four U.S. citizens held in Iranian prison, but appears to be the first case of the country arresting an American Jew in recent years. The Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran, an affiliate of the Human Rights in Iran NGO, reported in July that a second Jewish American had also been imprisoned and released on bail.

“The Iranian regime has a long history of unjustly and wrongfully detaining other countries’ citizens,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement to the Times. “Iran should release these individuals immediately.”