California Peace Activist Missing in Iran

The L.A. Times has reported that Ali Shakeri, a “much admired” Iranian-American community in Orange County is missing in Iran:

In March, Shakeri told colleagues he was flying to Tehran; his mother was ailing. But when former President Carter spoke at UCI this month, and Shakeri was oddly absent from the event, board members began to wonder whether he was coming home.

This week, the group Human Rights Watch said the Iranian government probably detained Shakeri, 59, at a Tehran airport and might be interrogating him in an isolated location. He was scheduled to leave Iran and fly to Europe on May 13 but never arrived at his destination. Instead, his ticket had been canceled and his luggage taken from the airline’s possession, the group said.  “It’s a disaster,” said John Graham of the UC Irvine center, “that this voice of peace has been potentially silenced.”

In recent weeks, two Iranian American scholars with dual citizenship have been imprisoned while visiting the country. A reporter, also a dual national, had her passport confiscated and is unable to leave Iran. The detention of one of those scholars, Haleh Esfandiari, bears close parallels to Shakeri’s apparent disappearance… When she headed to the airport to leave Iran on Dec. 30, she was stopped by knife-wielding men in masks, according to center officials. She was interrogated extensively and, earlier this month, imprisoned. The Iranian government this week announced she was being charged with setting up a network to overthrow the Islamic establishment.

In Orange County, where immigrant groups estimate about 250,000
Iranians live, Shakeri moved in political circles but did not dominate
them, friends said. He gave speeches and radio interviews and
periodically wrote about politics for Payam-E-Ashena, Payam’s magazine. 

Hossein Hosseini, a member of the Network of Iranian-American
Professionals of Orange County, said Shakeri advocated changing Iran’s
leadership but maintained that the Iranian people would bring about
that change only over time.  “He was only controversial depending
on your point of view,” Hosseini said. “To those who wanted to up and
overthrow the regime, he’s a sympathizer. He wasn’t a big thing. He
wasn’t well-known across the world. He was a harmless local guy.”