Who Was Reza Dehbashi Kivi?

Date: 06 October 2019 - 21:30

News ID: ۷۱۳۸۹

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iranian scientist Reza Dehbashi Kivi has been allowed to return to Iran after he was detained in Australia for more than a year.
The 38-year-old University of Queensland research student was held in custody for 13 months over allegations he exported American radar equipment for detecting stealth planes or missiles to Iran, circumventing U.S. sanctions.
News of his release came on the same day that two Australian travel bloggers returned home after being jailed in Iran for more than three months.
Dehbashi Kivi was arrested in Brisbane and taken into custody in September last year, while he was living in Redbank Plains, and failed in an effort to be released on bail.
During his bail hearing last year, his lawyer told Brisbane Magistrates Court he was studying his PhD at UQ, and was working on developing a machine to detect skin cancer.
Magistrate Barbara Tynan rejected his bail application, saying the threshold for allowing bail was higher for extradition cases than for domestic cases.
U.S. officials sought to extradite him on six charges, including conspiring to export special amplifiers classified as "defense articles" by the United States.
The U.S. government alleged the amplifiers were bought from American companies.
Another charge accused him of "aiding and abetting in the exportation of defense articles from the United States to Iran".
Dehbashi Kivi could have faced a maximum of 20 years in prison for the alleged offences, which dated back to 2008, when he was living in Iran.
Late on Saturday, Iranian media reported Dehbashi Kivi had already returned to home. Footage showed him wiping tears from his eyes as he walked into Tehran's Imam Khomeni International Airport.
He was accompanied home by the Iranian ambassador to Australia.
It is not the first time that Iranian university students and professors have been detained abroad.
Massoud Soleimani, a 49-year-old Iranian scientist left Iran on sabbatical last year, but was arrested upon arrival in Chicago and transferred to prison in Atlanta, Georgia for unspecified reasons.
The Iranian government has said the U.S. lures Iranian scientists who have conducted research in certain areas, published scientific articles, and ordered and bought laboratory equipment, into visiting the country and then arrests them.