“It should have taken much longer to study in detail the arguments against the verdict. Therefore this can’t be an appropriate decision,” Shafiie said.

Fortunately, there is still hope for these renowned AIDS doctors. Shafiie intends to file another appeal to Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi.

“I am somehow sure that the verdict will change,” Shafiie said.

The Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei were working globally to strengthen HIV/AIDS prevention and care systems in Iran when they were arrested last summer on allegations of espionage. They have been detained in Tehran’s Evin Prison since then. On May 12, activists, medical students and concerned citizens will participate in vigils and embassy visits worldwide to call for the Alaeis’ release.

Human rights defenders, journalists, students, trade unionists and others peacefully expressing their views or opinions are often charged under the vague auspices of public security….

In this respect, the European Union urgently calls on Iran to revoke the sentences against two HIV specialists, brothers Arash and Kamiar Alaei, sentenced to prison for six and three years respectively.

The statement also urged the dropping of legal charges against journalists, bloggers and students, as well as the reopening of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, which was shuttered by Tehran authorities in December.

The EU also commended the positive achievements of Iranian citizens in the fields of medicine, culture and human rights, but it “expresses concern about the Iranian government’s violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a signatory.”

For the Alaeis, today’s ICCPR anniversary marks another day in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. As the doctors have committed no internationally-recogized crime, PHR continues to call on Iran to uphold its international commitments and release them.

“According to a statement by the World Health Organisation, we have to multiply this figure four or five times to reach the real figure of those infected with AIDS in Iran,” warned Masoud Mardani, a member of the AIDS National Committee.

Unfortunately, Rasheed writes, HIV/AIDS has also been politicized through the detention of Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei.

AIDS, however, is not just a social taboo; it has also become a political and security issue. In June 2008, two brothers who were pioneers in the fight against AIDS in Iran were arrested and charged with having contacts with “hostile governments”.

The Alaeis’ detention has hampered Iran’s capacity to meet the needs of AIDS patients and fight the spread of the disease. The Alaeis’ groundbreaking work included harm-reduction programs, regional health worker training sessions and participation in international health conferences.

The brothers had also written a five-year plan for tackling AIDS on a national level – a first for Iran.

Physicians for Human Rights has led a coalition of activists calling for the Alaei doctors’ release. PHR members have called attention to the case through a vigil and at the August 2008 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, where Dr. Arash Alaei was scheduled to speak. In addition, thousands of concerned citizens, as well as Nobel Laureates, MacArthur Genius Grant recipients and international medical leaders have written letters to Iranian officials on the Alaeis’ behalf. You can join the movement by signing our petition.

Kristen Elisabeth Solberg quotes PHR’s Jonathan Hutson:

“Public health will suffer in Iran and around the world,” said Jonathan Hutson, chief communications officer of US-based Physicians for Human Rights. “Training people in public health work, engaging with international non-governmental organizations, and attending conferences abroad are not crimes but good medicine”, said Hutson.

Solberg also notes that the convictions could be part of an Iranian government crackdown against Western ties, even when such collaboration brings about scientific advancement. Previously, Iran’s religious and government leaders had publicly approved of the Doctors Alaei’s development of harm reduction programs.

The conviction could signal a shift on HIV/AIDS; a warning against ties with the West; or a crackdown on activists ahead of June presidential elections, advocates say. Some campaigners remain hopeful that Iran’s government will respond to the international outcry from health professionals and release the brothers.

Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei have been detained since June 2008 in Tehran’s Evin prison. On Dec. 31, 2008, they were sentenced to six and three years’ imprisonment respectively, for “cooperating with an enemy government.” PHR has led the campaign to call for the Alaei doctors’ release.

In recent months, Iranian officials have interrogated a member of the National Academy of Sciences, denied visas to visiting foreign athletes and shuttered Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi’s Human Rights Defenders office. Given these and other actions, it’s clear that the Alaei incident has little to do with the doctors’ alleged crimes. Instead, it is the result of a precarious political situation in Iran:

“In [the] Ahmadinejad administration, the pressure on all the dissidents and the opposition has intensified,” [said Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the Freedom Movement of Iran.] “Whenever the government feels weak inside, then it feels threatened by any move. Therefore, they cannot tolerate even a small gathering.”

NPR reports that the detention of the Alaeis is likely an extension of the larger human rights crackdown in Iran.

“The way that they are treating the Alaei brothers also shows that they are even either insecure, and they don’t feel comfortable with their activities, or that there is some personal clash against them,” [Yadzi said].

PHR and a coalition of concerned medical workers and organizations call for an end to the politically-motivated detention of the Alaeis. Only then will the doctors be able to continue their important work treating Iran’s people and advancing AIDS medicine worldwide.

Dr. Blachar expressed concern that the Alaeis’s secretive trial did not allow them to refute government charges that their international AIDS work amounted to communication with an enemy government.

Like Amnesty International, we consider them prisoners of conscience, as they appear to havebeen imprisoned solely in relation to their work with international and specifically US institutions in the field of HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment.

We are deeply concerned that Dr Arash Alaei and Dr Kamiar Alaei were tried on 31 December in proceedings that fell far short of international standards for fair trial, as the evidence against them was not fully disclosed to the two men and their defence, and they did not have the right to call and examine witnesses.

In addition, Dr. Blachar urges Iranian authorities to respect the human dignity of the doctors until their release is secured.

We are therefore asking for the immediate release of Arash and Kamiar Alaei, as their imprisonment appears to be politically motivated and related to their international contacts in the context of their work on HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment.

We are also calling on the authorities to ensure that Dr Arash Alaei and Dr Kamiar Alaei are not tortured or otherwise ill‐treated. WMA condemns strongly torture as a flagrant violation of human dignity and human rights that cannot be justified under any political, military, religious or other cause.

Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei have been detained since June 2008 in Tehran’s Evin prison. On Dec. 31, they were sentenced to six and three years’ imprisonment respectively, for “cooperating with an enemy government.” Prior to their arrest, they orchestrated Iran’s first harm reduction programs,  spoke at health conferences globally and trained doctors in their region.

Tehran’s Revolutionary Court last week sentenced the brothers Kamiar and Arash Alaei to, respectively, three- and six-year jail terms in the city’s notorious Evin prison on charges of being US stooges bent on fomenting a velvet revolution to overthrow the state.

One of the acts that apparently attracted suspicion was the brothers’ participation alongside US government officials in two US–Iranian health-diplomacy round tables held in the United States in 2006 and 2007. The meetings were run by the Aspen Institute, a non-governmental organization founded in 1950 to provide an impartial international forum on major policy issues. The chair of one of the sessions introduced it proudly as one of the “first formal dialogues for almost 25 years” between Iran and the United States.

***

Such dialogue — ’smart power’ — should be encouraged by all sides, because cooperation in the relatively apolitical areas of medicine and science keeps open rare avenues of back-channel diplomacy. Unfortunately, ‘dumb power’ is currently prevailing. The action of the Iranian judiciary in this case can have only a chilling effect on such activities, and there have been ill-considered moves elsewhere.

Even Iranian President Ahmadinejad had lauded the Alaei’s work at a Columbia University talk in 2007, describing the doctors as “shining torches who shed light in order to remove darkness and the ambiguities around us in guiding humanity out of ignorance and perplexity.” If that’s the case, then he should release these visionaries from their senseless imprisonment.

President Ahmadinejad. Your country’s HIV-prevention programme has won respect in the Muslim world and beyond. As you said at Columbia University, the open scientific and medical dialogue needed to progress in issues such as the fight against AIDS must be above the contemporary realpolitik of broader political issues. We urge you today to request the appropriate authorities to review the cases of Arash and Kamiar Alaei so that the truth may prevail.

The Alaeis were arrested last June, and their detention and trial were “unfair even by the draconian standards of Iran’s penal code”, says Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for Physicians for Human Rights, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hutson points out that the six-month detention itself breached human rights, as Iran failed to meet its international legal obligations to explain the arrests, or to allow the men access to lawyers or the right to contest their detention before a judge.

And although Iranian law prohibits anyone from being detained for more than four months without charge, the state filed the charge of communicating with an “enemy government” only in December. Moreover, at the trial the prosecution indicted the men on new secret charges, now known to be the plot charges, denying them the right to defend themselves against these accusations and their right to due process.

Furthermore, the purported confessions used by Iranian prosecutors were likely extorted, according to sources close to PHR.

Last week, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency cited an Iranian counter-intelligence official as saying that the brothers and two other unnamed individuals had confessed to working on behalf of the United States to overthrow the state, and that these statements would be televised. “Given interrogation techniques and duress known to exist in other cases like this one in Iran, any purported confession must be viewed as tainted and unreliable,” says Hutson.

In light of these gross violations of due process and the utter lack of evidence against the Alaeis, we urge the government of Iran to release the doctors immediately.

PHR’s Sarah Kalloch speaks both on the false accusations against the Alaeis and their important harm reduction work in a recent interview with Public Radio International:

The world needs the expertise coming out of Iran in terms of harm reduction programs.  Iran has the best programs on this in the world.  The United States needs information on this, Russia, all over the world we need their expertise.  And to imprison Kamiar and Arash for sharing their expertise, for sharing scientific knowledge coming out of Iran is really tragic.

There are certainly a great number of Iranian physicians and nurses and medical personnel who are doing great work.  And the Alaeis’ are part of a wonderful system; however what we are afraid of is that this arrest will put a chilling effect on every kind of public health exchange coming out of Iran.  And in fact, some of the most renowned world leaders on HIV/AIDS have spoken out in support of the Alaeis and have encouraged Iran to release them.

According to the authors, the jailing of Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei for their engagement with Western doctors shows a disregard for “the value of scientific curiosity that President Obama hailed in his inauguration speech.”

Dr. Kamiar Alaei was doing research and providing treatment for a disease that Iranian propagandists can barely acknowledge. A nation where the president himself insists that homosexuality doesn’t exist and where discussion of sex, drugs and AIDS comes so uneasily can be a hostile place for people like Dr. Alaei, who has helped to establish Iran’s first HIV/STD and drug-use prevention and care center.

Still, there’s no evidence that we’re aware of that Dr. Alaei was conspiring against the Islamic system of government, as he’s now been convicted of doing. What seems more likely is that an Iranian citizen who had been studying in the United States is a victim of injustice.

The editorial argues that the announcing of the Alaeis’ years-long jail sentences just before the inauguration was a power play by Iranian officials.

Such a belligerent tone continues to this day, with a shrill warning to the Obama administration to stop spying on Iran.

In an era of AIDS and other complex diseases, medical knowledge sharing across borders could potentially save lives and break new ground in treatment methods. Instead, the jailing of the Alaies for working with doctors globally only serves to heighten U.S.-Iran tensions.

What Tehran calls an intelligence war is actually a confrontation over human rights and fair play. Ending the tensions will be daunting and complicated.

Reducing them, though, will be altogether easier. Iran must explain to the world why Kamiar Alaei and Arash Alaei belong in the dungeon known as Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Dr. Kamiar Alaei is a PhD student at SUNY Albany. He and his brother Arash were instrumental in developing some of Iran’s first harm-reduction programs for HIV/AIDS patients. They have been detained since June of 2008, and their sentences were handed down earlier this month.