Al Jazeera: The son of an American journalist working for Iranian state television said his mother has been imprisoned in the United States for reasons unknown. Marzieh Hashemi, 59, an anchorwoman for Iran’s English-language Press TV, was arrested on arrival at St Louis Lambert International Airport on Sunday and transferred by the FBI to a detention facility in Washington, DC, the broadcaster reported on Wednesday.
“We still have no idea what’s going on,” Hossein Hashemi, her elder son, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Washington. “Everyone we ask is very vague and the information is still limited.”
He said no charges have been filed against his mother, and he and his siblings were subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.
Hossein said his mother was shooting a Black Lives Matter documentary in St Louis, Missouri, and was about to board a flight to Denver when she was apprehended at the airport.
The FBI said in an email it had no comment on Hashemi’s arrest.
The journalist was born Melanie Franklin in New Orleans and has worked for Iran’s state television network for 25 years.
Hossein Hashemi said his mother, an American citizen, lives in Tehran and comes back to the US usually once a year to see family, often scheduling documentary work somewhere in the country as well.
“It’s important to note that she is an American citizen, she’s a Muslim American citizen, she is an African-American, and she has certain particular kinds of views that make it difficult for us not to think in conspiratorial sorts of ways,” said Hossein Hashemi, a research fellow at the University of Colorado.
US law allows judges to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case, and that they would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena. Marzieh Hashemi had not been contacted by the FBI before she was detained and would “absolutely” have been willing to cooperate with the agency, according to her son.
The family is trying to hire a lawyer, but it has been difficult because she has not been charged with a crime, he said.
Iran’s state broadcaster held a news conference and launched a hashtag campaign for Hashemi.
“We will not spare any legal action” to help her, said Paiman Jebeli, deputy chief of Iran’s state IRIB broadcaster.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told state TV that Hashemi’s arrest indicates the “apartheid and racist policy” of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Our time is a news portal