In a case drawing criticism from outside lawyers, an Iranian
engineer sentenced to prison Monday for violating arms control laws was
lured to the nation of Georgia by American authorities for a fake arms
deal, arrested, extradited to the U.S., and held in prison for two
years -- including months in solitary confinement before his guilty
plea last year -- all totally in secret, according to the Justice
Department and media reports.
Export control lawyers told Politico's
Laura Rozen the politically-charged case of Amir Hossein Ardebili --
which was under seal until this month -- is troubling for two reasons:
first, he was an Iranian who never left Iran, nonetheless lured out of
the country and targeted by U.S. law enforcement; and, second, that he
was sentenced after two years of secret imprisonment.
The Justice Department says the case was kept under seal for so long
to protect ongoing investigations based on information obtained in the
Ardebili probe.
Here's the CliffsNotes version of the Ardebili story, based on reports in the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the DOJ's release on the case:
Contact was first made with Ardebili in 2004 after U.S. authorities,
acting on a tip, set up dummy companies in the Philadelphia area. A
former government procurement officer who lived with his parents in
Sharaz, Iran, Ardebili had never left Iran until he traveled to
Georgia. There, in October 2007, American agents taped a meeting in a
hotel room where he requested parts for various military uses.
In January 2008 he was extradited to the United States and landed in
federal prison in Philadelphia. He was held in solitary confinement for
four months and he plead guilty to trying to acquire radar and aircraft
parts, including a computer for F-4 fighter jets, in May 2008.
Besides his extended secret confinement, one export control attorney told Rozen that there are jurisdictional issues in the case:
"What's most interesting here is the U.S. effort to expand,
seemingly without limit, claims of U.S. jurisdiction over activities by
foreign citizens which are performed in their own countries and which
are legal in those countries," Clif Burns, an export control attorney
with Bryan Cave said.
Americans would be "apoplectic" if the reverse scenario occurred, Burns posited.
"What would be the response if Iranian agents abducted the CEO of
Twitter while he was in, say, the UAE, dumped him into solitary
confinement in an Iranian prison, and secretly indicted him with aiding
and abetting sedition by Iranian dissenters?" he said.
No radical, Ardebili, is said to be a businessman in a "cottage industry" of procurement encouraged -- but not directly controlled -- by the Iranian government.
Tehran has criticized the treatment of Ardebili, and has reportedly linked the case to three American hikers being held in Iran. And Iranian press account of Ardebili's sentencing carries the headline, "US court sentences abducted Iranian to prison."
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