Hashemi Ordeal Mobilizes World Against Injustice in U.S.

Date: 26 January 2019 - 21:47

News ID: ۶۲۵۱۵

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Rallies have been held in many cities around the world to protest U.S. imprisonment of Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi, who had traveled to the United States to visit her family.
Demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, where Hashemi recounted her ordeal during her time in jail and mistreatment by the American justice system.
"It can be called whatever they want to call it, but I was kidnapped from the St. Louis airport. Fortunately my son Reza was with me otherwise who knows what could have happened. You can be made to disappear very easily," Hashemi said.
The arrest had a lot to do "with where I live and related to the work I do," she added.
Similar rallies were also held in the Australian city of Melbourne, where protesters slammed U.S. authorities for forcibly removing Hashemi's hijab in custody.
In London, people gathered outside the U.S. embassy to express their anger at the U.S. legal system.
They chanted slogans in support of Hashemi and carried placards that read, "Journalism is not a crime."
"I think Marzieh Hashemi is a symbol - a symbol of the dangerous situation Muslims are in or non-Muslims are in, not only in the United States but in many countries of the world where we have been victims of Islamophobia," Ahmed Haneef, an Islamic cleric, told Press TV.
He criticized the "demonization and the criminalization" of people just because they believe in a particular religion or just because they oppose the United States' efforts to dominate the world.
Similar protests were held in Los Angeles, Toronto, Pakistan’s Karachi and Abuja in Nigeria.
Hashemi, a 59-year-old Muslim convert who has lived in Iran for years, was detained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri on January 13 while in the U.S. to visit her ailing brother and other family members.
She was taken to court after spending a night in the facility’s "unbelievable conditions,” where she was incarcerated in solitary confinement next to other people from different nationalities that the FBI had detained for unknown reasons. She was initially forced to remove her hijab and only offered non-halal food.
The U.S. government said Hashemi had been arrested as a "material witness” in an unspecified criminal proceeding and that she faced no charges herself.
To get to the courtroom, the Press TV journalist was forced to climb the stairs while in shackles because of the malfunctioning elevators that authorities had been unable to repair due to the ongoing government shutdown.
Hashemi was ultimately released without charge on January 23 after spending 10 days in prison and undergoing three grand jury hearings.
During a live interview with Press TV from Washington on Thursday evening, Hashemi spoke about her experience and how she is resolved to prevent others from being subjected to such mistreatment by the American justice system.
She said she had been "harassed" by American security officers during her previous trips to her homeland, but her detention took everything to a "whole new level.”
"In general, when I travel throughout the United States … I always have to be at the airports three to three-and-a-half hours prior to flight just to make it through all obstacles,” she said.