Iran Continues to Hold American Student

L.A. native Esha Momeni, a graduate student at California State University, Northridge, was in Tehran visiting family and working on her thesis, which involved interviewing women about their rights (or lack of them, more accurately) in Iran. She was arbitrarily arrested on a traffic stop on Oct. 15, and was sent to the notorious Evin Prison, where she's being held without charge in Section 209 -- a super-secret wing run by intelligence services where writers, students, intellectuals, dissidents, activists, etc., disappear. (Montreal photographer Zahra Kazemi was tortured to death inside Evin's Section 209 back in 2003.)

Needless to say, Esha's imprisonment, with her family not allowed to see her, is a very serious case. After authorities arrested her for the supposed traffic offense, they took her not straight to prison but to her family's home, where they confiscated her computer and the video footage she'd shot while with members of the Campaign for Equality in Tehran. As Amnesty International reports, dozens of the campaign members -- who have been gathering one million petition signatures to demand equal rights for women in Iran -- have been arrested, beaten and harassed.

Jolene Koester, president of CSU Northridge, issued a statement that said in part: "Ms. Momeni is a U.S. citizen. She is a student invested in learning and understanding current conditions in the country of her family’s origin. Anyone who values knowledge and the role of academic inquiry in shedding light on the human condition should be concerned. We are in support of the efforts of the U.S. government in their efforts to secure Ms. Momeni’s immediate release and are in the process of contacting the following individuals and organizations to obtain their assistance: Senator Diane Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer, Representative Brad Sherman, the Department of State, and Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee."

Here are a few ways to help Esha:

• Keep up on the case at the blog maintained by her friends

• Sign a petition for her release

• E-mail a letter on Esha's behalf (additional addresses available from Amnesty)

The NYT has an interview with Ahmad Batebi, one of Evin's most famous dissident inmates who recently escaped Iran and was given asylum in America: “Within his own eyewitness experience, what happened to him happened also to 98 percent of the other prisoners. You see violations of human rights in Iran that are actually much more extensive than being able to describe in words. He believes that there are things that people here cannot even dream of taking place.”