The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

11 · Thursday, April 8, 2010 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.oakvillebeaver.com Oakville family's relatives freed from Iranian jail By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF She hoped against hope that her brother would be returned to his family and now her greatest wish has been realized. Oakville resident Vida Mobasher is still smiling with joy following the release of her younger brother Babak, 31, and his wife Leva, 24, from imprisonment in Iran. The two were released on bail on separate days in March after spending more than two months behind bars for allegedly participating in anti-government demonstrations and emailing photos of those demonstrations abroad. "I talked on the phone with him two hours after he was released and I couldn't stop crying," said Vida. "He tried to calm me down. He just kept saying, `I'm okay Vida, I'm alive.'" Babak and Leva's release brings an uncertain end to what Vida has called a nightmare in which she was desperate to help her family, but was too far away to do anything. The couple's ordeal began in the early morning hours of Jan. 5, when Babak, a successful businessman and member of Tehran's minority Baha'i community, was arrested in his home during a series of police raids that netted 12 other Baha'i youths. Leva, who is also Baha'i, was arrested the next day after being lured to a police station on the premise that she could pick up Babak's laptop and some of the other items confiscated by the police the night before. While charged with anti-government activity, Vida and others contend the arrests had nothing to do with anything Babak and Leva did, but everything to do with being Baha'i. Founded in Persia in 1844, the Baha'i faith believes Muhammad was only one of a series of divine messengers, which also included Abraham, Moses, Buddha and Jesus. The faith is not tolerated in Iran where the Iranian regime banned the religion shortly after coming to power in 1979. Vida, whose entire family is Baha'i, had to leave Iran because as a Baha'i, she was not allowed by the regime to pursue her education or get a job. Laila Eiriksson, secretary general of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Oakville, said this persecution grew worse after Iran's widely-disputed elections in June and the civil unrest that followed. "Our representatives at the UN in New York and in Geneva have made very strong statements indicating the Baha'i in Iran are being used as scapegoats," she said. "They need to blame someone and so they are blaming this unrest on the Baha'i." Following their arrests neither Vida nor her parents, who still reside in Iran, heard a single Leva and Babak Mobasher word from Babak or Leva and received no information about where they had been taken, if they had gone to trial or if they'd been sentenced. Vida's fears grew as more Baha'i were arrested in Iran. "These 70 days were a nightmare, it still is a nightmare, because everyday when I woke up, the first thing I would do is check my e-mail and it would make me scream," she said. "They were arresting other people, my friends who I grew up with. So they'd taken my brother and my sister-in-law and now my friends, so every morning was a new nightmare." Vida would later learn that Babak and Leva were initially taken to Iran's notorious Evin Prison where Iranian Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in 2003, only three weeks after being arrested. Throughout the bulk of their incarceration, Babak and Leva were not permitted visitors, however, on two occasions they were able to visit each other. The combined length of these visits totalled approximately 10 minutes, said Vida. Eventually they were transferred to RajaeeShahr Prison in a neighbouring city where Babak was placed in solitary confinement in a cell little bigger than a cubical. He would remain in this cell, which was filthy and crawling with insects, for the rest of his stay in prison. During this period, interrogators attempted to make Babak confess to participating in demonstrations against the Iranian regime on behalf of some kind of Baha'i conspiracy group. See Jailed page 12 Oakville Generating Station Recognizing Ontario's Environmental Leadership 1.866.317.9887 oakville@transcanada.com www.transcanada.com/oakville http://www.transcanada.com/oakville/therightchoiceforontario/ View of Oakville Generating Station from Royal Windsor Drive