US may allow visit of Iranian inmate

The family of an innocent Iranian woman imprisoned in the US says American authorities have agreed in principle to allow them to visit her.

Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan’s father told Press TV that the supposed agreement will allow four family members, Sharzad’s twin daughters and her parents, to visit her in the US prison where she is being held.

However, he noted that visas have not yet been issued.

In case the visas are actually issued by American authorities, it will mark the first time that Shahrzad’s family is allowed to visit her in more than 3.5 years.

The mother of twin daughters was arrested in the US in December 2007, after being forced to return to the States from a vacation in Cyprus. She has been permitted brief phone calls to her family in Iran during her three-year imprisonment.

Her former husband, Mahmoud Seif, has been accused by US authorities of an attempt to export night-vision goggles to Iran from Austria.

Nevertheless, she was detained and sentenced to five years in prison by a Florida federal court in the absence of her husband.

The jailed Iranian woman has complained that she has been subjected to brutal mental and physical torture while held at various US prisons.

Shahrzad’s mother said in late April that her daughter has been transferred from a prison in the state of Oklahoma to the Waseca prison in the state of Minnesota.

Belqeys Roshan added that her daughter suffered difficult conditions in her previous jail cell and that she has expressed pleasure to be able to have access to a bar of soap in the bathroom of her new jail.

This is while Iran released last September a 31-year-ole American national Sarah Shourd, who was arrested in 2010 along with two other Americans for illegally entering the country from Iraq based on humanitarian grounds. Earlier, Iran granted visas for parents of the US detainees to facilitate a family visit.