Abbas Amir-Entezam
Gale Encyclopedia of the Mideast & N. Africa:
Top
Abbas Amir-Entezam
1933 -
An Iranian political activist.
Abbas Amir-Entezam was born in Tehran into a bazaar carpet-manufacturing family. As a student at Tehran University in the early 1950s he became politically active, eventually joining the National Resistance Movement, a clandestine group formed by religious nationalists following the 1953 coup d'état against the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The National Resistance Movement was a forerunner to the Freedom Movement, of which Amir-Entezam became a founding member in 1961. From 1964 to 1969 he lived in the United States, where he obtained a master's degree in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley (1966) and was active in the Muslim Student Association and the Confederation of Iranian Students. Upon returning to Iran, he resumed his participation in the Freedom Movement. In 1977, the party selected him to be a contact with the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Freedom Movement leader Mehdi Bazargan chose Amir-Entezam to be his deputy prime minister in the provisional government he formed in February 1979 to rule Iran in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Later that year he went to Stockholm to serve as Iranian ambassador to the Scandinavian countries.
After Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran (November 1979), they found documents indicating several meetings between Amir-Entezam and U.S. diplomatic personnel. Although Bazargan insisted that Amir-Entezam had met with the Americans at the behest of the government, he was recalled to Iran, where a revolutionary court charged him with being a spy. Amir-Entezam was convicted of espionage in 1980 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Beginning in 1996, however, he was permitted to have periodic weekend home visits. In December 1997, prison authorities failed to pick him up at the end of one such visit, but he was rearrested in September 1998 after criticizing his former prison warden in a radio interview. He was released on bail in early 2002 but rearrested again in April 2003, a few days after faxing to national and international media outlets an appeal for a referendum on the country's political system. AmirEntezam is believed to be modern Iran's longest-serving political prisoner.
Bibliography
Chehabi, H. E. Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
— NEGUIN YAVARI UPDATED BY ERIC HOOGLUND
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
Abbas Amir-Entezam
| Abbas Amir-Entezam عباس امیرانتظام |
|
|---|---|
| Deputy Prime Minister of Iran | |
| In office 1 March 1979 – 6 November 1979 |
|
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Preceded by | Ebrahim Yazdi |
| Succeeded by | Mohsen Sazegara* |
| Spokesman of the Government | |
| In office 4 February 1979 – 6 November 1979 |
|
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 2 January 1933 Tehran, Iran |
| Political party | National Front of Iran |
| Spouse(s) | Elaheh Amir-Entezam |
| Children | 2 |
| Religion | Islam |
| *Office vacant from 6 November 1981– 31 October 1981. | |
Abbas Amir-Entezam (Persian: عباس امیر انتظام, born 18 August 1932) was the spokesman and Deputy Prime Minister in the Interim Cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979. In 1981 he was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of spying for the U.S., a charge critics suggest was a cover for retaliation against his early opposition to theocratic government in Iran. He is now "the longest-held political prisoner in the Islamic Republic of Iran".[1] According to Fariba Amini, as of 2006 he has "been in jail for 17 years and in and out of jail for the last ten years, altogether for 27 years."[2]
|
Contents
|
Education and career
Entezam was born to "a middle-class family" in Tehran in 1933. He studied Electromechanical Engineering at Faculty of Engineering, University of Tehran and graduated in 1955.
In 1956 Entezam left Iran for study at A.S.T.E.F. Institute (Paris). He then went to the U.S. and completed his postgraduate education at the University of California in Berkeley. After graduation, he remained in the US and worked as an entrepreneur.[3]
Around 1970, Entezam mother was dying and he returned to Iran to be with her. Because of his earlier political activities, the Shah's Intelligence Service would not allow him to return to the U.S. He stayed in Iran, marrying, becoming a father and developing a business in partnership with his friend and mentor, Mehdi Bazargan. In 1979 the Shah was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, recently returned to Iran, appointed Bazargan as Prime Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. "Bazargan asks Entezam to be the Deputy Prime Minister and the official spokesperson for the new government." [3]
According to Entezam's website:
Following the orders of the Prime Minister, Entezam sets out to rebuild the relationship between the US and the post-revolutionary Iran. He retains diplomatic contacts with the US embassy, advocating for normalization of the relationship between the two countries.[3]
This was to later lead to imprisonment. In 1979 Amir-Entezam "succeeded in having the majority of the cabinet sign a letter opposing the Assembly of Experts", which was drawing up the new theocratic constitution where democratic bodies were subordinant to clerical bodies. His theocratic opponents attacked him[1] and in August 1979 Bazargan "appointed Entezam to become Iran's ambassador to Sweden." [3]
Imprisonment
In 1981, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, asked Entezam to come back quickly to Tehran via an encrypted message. After coming back to Tehran, he was arrested because of allegations based on some documents retrieved from U.S. embassy takeover, and received lifetime prison from court. He was released in 1998, but in less than 3 months, he was arrested again because of an interview with Tous daily newspaper, one of the reformist newspapers of the time.
In smuggled letters, Entezam has related that on three separate occasions, he had been taken blindfolded to the execution chamber - once being kept "there two full days while the Imam contemplated his death warrant." He has spent 555 days in solitary confinement, and in cells so "overcrowded that inmates took turns sleeping on the floor - each person rationed to thee hours of sleep every 24 hours." He suffered permanent ear damage, skin disease, and spinal deformities."[4] He has attacked the regimes saying
Islam is a religion of care, compassion, and forgiveness. This regime makes it a religion of destruction, death, and torture.[4]
As of 2008 and after more than 25 years, Amir-Entezam is still in prison. He has always denied all the allegations that have been put against him in his trial and asks for a retrial.
Awards and honors
- Bruno Kreisky Prize (1998)
- Jan Karski Award for Moral Courage (2003)
See also
References
- ^ a b Burning candle. Honoring Abbas Amir-Entezam on the 25th anniversary of his arrest. Masoud Kazemzadeh, December 21, 2004
- ^ 02/24/06 Perseverance and honor: Interview with Abbas Amir-Entezam by Fariba Amini
- ^ a b c d The official web site of Mr. Entezam click on Biography
- ^ a b Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian, University of California Press, 1999, p.140
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Gale Encyclopedia of the Mideast & N. Africa
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Read more
