“a riveting tale of both man’s inhumanity to man - and a courage that burns through that darkness.”
Emad Shargi is an American citizen who was wrongfully detained in the Islamic Republic of Iran from April 2018 to September 2023. He was subjected to intensive interrogations, mock executions, inhumane prison conditions, and egregious violations of his due process.
Emad was first detained in Tehran on April 24, 2018. At the time, he and his wife, both Iranian American citizens, were visiting family in Tehran for the Persian Nowruz holidays. In the middle of the night, more than twenty plainclothes agents from the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Agency (IRGC-IA) broke into the house where they were staying. They confiscated all their belongings, including their passports, computers, and mobile phones. Emad was arrested and taken to Section 2A of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, operated by the IRGC-IA.
For 8 months, Emad was interrogated under the harshest conditions, sometimes for 9 hours a day, and every mundane detail of his life was repeatedly examined. Despite this, the IRGC-IA found nothing to justify his detention. He was released on bail in December 2018 and placed under house arrest. Throughout 2019, he was repeatedly summoned to the prosecutor’s office at Evin prison and questioned.
Finally, in late December 2019, the prosecutor at Evin prison told him that he had been cleared of all charges, and a letter of acquittal stating that their investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing was issued and handed to him.
Less than a week later, Qassem Soleimani was assassinated outside Baghdad airport when a US MQ-9 Reaper ended his career as Iran’s chief international terrorist. Emad later learned that the country’s Prosecutor General had then objected to his acquittal and had rejected his own top prosecutor’s decision. Emad’s case was reopened and sent to Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, where the notorious Judge Salavati, also known as the “hanging judge,” presides.
In November 2020, Emad was sentenced to 10 years following a mock trial on completely fabricated charges, despite having been officially cleared of all accusations. After a harrowing attempt to escape the Islamic Republic through its border with Iraqi Kurdistan, Emad was again taken to Evin’s 2A, where he endured another 8 months of interrogation and torture. In September 2021, he was finally moved from solitary confinement to the public ward of Evin prison.
He spent the next 2 years in Evin prison, nearly losing his life in October 2022 when prisoners set the prison on fire in support of the mass demonstrations across the country following the death of a young Kurdish woman at the hands of the regime’s morality police.
Emad and 4 other Americans were freed from the Islamic Republic on September 18, 2023, and landed at Fort Belvoir in the early hours of the following morning.
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please contact Lisa Reiter at Chartwell Speakers: lisa@chartwellspeakers.com