By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The confrontation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America could be aptly called as Right versus Wrong, Truth versus Falsehood, Virtue versus Vice, and Angel versus the Devil.
The latest satanic act of the US is the arrest, imprisonment and torture of one of its own innocent citizens, a middle aged female journalist, whose only fault is the colour of her skin, her embracing of the truth of Islam, her Islamic attire, her marriage to an Iranian, her bringing up of virtuous sons and daughters, her support for the oppressed all over the globe, and her work as an anchor for Press TV that involves broadcasting of real news, factual analysis of events, and interviews with politicians and media persons of various countries, including Americans, in order to present facts to viewers worldwide.
Marziyeh Hashemi needs no introduction. The voice and the face of this Afro-American lady, who normally dons a chador, and who according to reports has been deprived by the US prison guards of even her headscarf, is familiar to all.
She never railed and ranted against her homeland, nor insulted the dignity of any Christian of even Jewish person, as the men and women on TV screens of western countries indulge with gay abandon against Islamic teachings, against Hijab-clad Muslim women, against the Islamic Republic of Iran and against other independent countries.
Born Melanie Franklin, she grew up and completed her studies in her homeland, preserving her virtue and safeguarding her feminine dignity – factors that attracted her inquisitive mind to the dynamism of Islam and resulted in her marriage to an Iranian Muslim, after which she shifted to Iran and has happily lived in the Islamic Republic for over the past three decades, interspersed with frequent visits to the US to see family members and friends.
It means, this was not Marziyah Hashemi’s first trip to the US after long years, nor did she enter the US illegally, and neither was she on a secret mission.
She was visiting her homeland for humanitarian reasons in order to see her ailing brother.
On last Sunday, however, the moment she landed at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, she was unceremoniously seized by FBI agents. Without any arrest warrant and without specifying the reasons she was handcuffed and dragged like a criminal to a detention center, from which she was whisked away to a prison in Washington, where her scarf was forcibly removed, and where, according to her family, she is virtually starving because the brutal jailors have refused to provide any healthy meal by offering only sandwiches of pork – a meat which Muslims, Jews and many conscientious Christians consider unclean.
Indeed, the mistreatment of Marziyeh Hashemi is not just the miscarriage of justice, but deliberate violation of human rights on the basis of skin colour and religion by the regime of Donald Trump.  
Not just the officials of Iran – her adopted home – have denounced her arrest, but people in many countries, familiar with her regular appearance on Press TV, have called on the US to immediately release her.
Even western wire agencies, aware of her fair and frank journalistic duties have deplored her arrest and mistreatment. According to The Associated Press (AP) a call to the FBI went unanswered early on Wednesday morning, and there was no response to even a written request for comment.
Her relatives in the US were unable to contact her, and she was allowed to contact her daughter only two days after her arrest and mistreatment.
Observers are of the opinion that Marziyeh Hashemi is likely to be labelled a "terrorist” or be branded "anti-Semitic”, which in the American jargon means every fair-minded person refusing to condone the state terrorism of the US and its hooliganism around the world, as well as the genocide of Palestinians by the child-killing racist Zionist regime.
The thuggish administration of Donald Trump might call its cruel and unjustified move as a retaliotary act for Iran’s arrest of US spies and saboteurs, when the fact of the matter is that Marziyeh Hashemi is innocent, in stark contrast to those detained in Iran and caught red-handed while engaged in nefarious acts against the security of the Islamic Republic and the interests of the Iranian people.
If Washington thinks the Press TV anchor is a bargaining chip for release of American criminals and a pressure tactics against Iran, then it is again totally off the mark.
The Islamic Republic never bows to threats, and so does a committed and brave journalist like Marziyeh Hashemi. The US will be in for more surprises and shocks if it fails to release her and allow her return to Iran after seeing her ailing brother.