Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei
Update
We are happy to report that Kamiar Alaei, an AIDS researcher accused of ‘seeking to overthrow the government,” was released from Evin Prison in fall 2011 after a two and a half year imprisonment which included months in solitary confinement. However, his brother, Dr. Arash Alaei, remains in prison. Kamiar Alaei has stated that he fears his brother will face further retribution in Evin if he openly criticizes the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Arash and Kamiar were sentenced on January 21, 2009 to three and six years in prison respectively.
Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, two brothers working on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, were detained by Iranian security forces on June 28, 2008 and were held without charge for six months until their one-day secret trial on December 31, 2008. In this trial they were charged with “communications with an enemy government” and “seeking to overthrow the Iranian government.”
The brothers helped establish a series of advanced HIV/AIDS clinics and a national HIV prevention plan. They also participated in the first US-funded people-to-people exchange with post-revolutionary Iran in 2006, visiting Tufts-New England Medical Center and other medical-related sites with a group of Iranian doctors. Kamiar, who has a Masters degree in public health from Harvard, was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the State University of New York-Albany and was home in Iran for a summer break at the time of his arrest.
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