Dubai: A court in Iran has handed a nine-year jail sentence to British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, after convicting him of conducting “subversive” research work, the semi-official news agency Tasnim said on Sunday.
Ahmady was also fined €600,000 euros ($964,000) – the sum Iranian authorities said he received for his research from institutions accused of seeking to topple Iran’s Islamic government, Tasnim reported.
There was no immediate official comment on the sentence, which was also reported by other Iranian news agencies and a human rights groups, as well as by Ahmady’s lawyer, who said that he would appeal.
“Ahmady was accused of acquiring illicit property from his cooperation in implementing subversive institutions’ projects in the country,” Tasnim said.
Ahmady, an ethnic Kurd who had researched controversial issues such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) in Iran, was detained in August 2019 but released on bail three months later, according to human rights groups.
Ahmady said on Twitter he had been denied access to a lawyer during his detention.
“Contrary to all…hope for a fair trial, I was sentenced after being denied access to a lawyer during 100 days of detention and extrajudicial interrogations, and after two unprofessional trial sessions full of judicial violations,” Ahmady tweeted.
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (Reuters).