Timeline
Haleh Esfandiari's Detention
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Thursday, May 31, 2007; 11:52 AM
Timeline of events in the detention of Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Source: Woodrow Wilson Center
May 29, 2007: Iran's judiciary spokesman issues a statement indicating that Esfandiari, along with two other Iranian-Americans, has been formally charged with espionage and endangering national security. No trial date is announced.
May 21: Iranian TV reports that Esfandiari has been charged with seeking to topple the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
May 17: Ebadi tells the Washington Post that the Iranian government had rejected her request to represent Esfandiari.
May 16: Esfandiari's family retains Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi to represent her.
May 15: Esfandiari is allowed a brief telephone call to her mother.
May 15: Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi says that Esfandiari is being investigated for crimes against national security and that her case will be handled by the Intelligence Ministry.
May 12: The publication "Kayhan" accuses Esfandiari of working with the U.S. and Israeli governments and with involvement in efforts to topple Iran's Islamic regime.
May 7: Esfandiari is summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence. When she arrives on the following morning, she is put into a car and taken to Evin prison. She is incarcerated and allowed a single phone call to her mother.
End of April or early May: Esfandiari is telephoned once again and invited to "cooperate."
Feb. 20: Lee Hamilton, president and director of the Wilson Center, writes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking that Esfandiari be allowed to travel. He receives no reply.
Feb. 17: Esfandiari receives a threatening phone call. She hears nothing 10 weeks.
Feb. 14: The interrogations cease.
Jan. 18: The interrogator and three other men show up at Esfandiari's mother's apartment. She wakes up from a nap to find the men, one with a video-camera, staring into her bedroom.
Jan. 15: Esfandiari is told that the questioning is over.
Jan. 4: Esfandiari undergoes the first of a series of interrogations that stretches over the next six weeks. Some last seven or eight hours in a single day. She is allowed to go home each evening but the interrogations include intimidation and threats. The questioning focuses almost entirely on the activities and programs of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. She is pressured to make a confession and implicate the Wilson Center in activities in which it had no part, but refuses.
Jan. 3: While applying for replacement Iranian travel documents at the passport office, Esfandiari is invited to an 'interview' by a man from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence.
Dec. 30, 2006: On her way to the Tehran airport to fly back to Washington, Esfandiari is stopped in a taxi by three masked, knife-wielding men. They threaten to kill her and take away all of her belongings, including her Iranian and American passports.
Dec. 21, 2006: Esfandiari, a dual Iranian-American national, travels from Washington D.C. to Tehran, Iran to visit her 93-year old mother for one week.
On the Web: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
