International

Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen must make a statement regarding the plight of the Dutch-Iranian Abdullah Al Mansouri, whose family says that he has been sentenced in Iran to thirty years in prison. “The Dutch government says that it knows nothing about this man's condemnation to a lengthy jail sentence and that is most strange” says SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel. “Our ambassador in Tehran should, if he had taken note of the unanimous urging of Parliament, have followed the trial, attended hearings and informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs about what was occurring. This appears, therefore, not to have happened.”

Al-Mansouri came to the Netherlands in 1988 as a political refugee, but continued to campaign on behalf of the people of the oil-rich Iranian region of Ahwaz. In 2006 he was arrested during a visit to Syria and extradited to Iran. The SP began immediately to demand a fair trial and has kept up this demand ever since. According to his family, who live in Maastricht, however, an Iranian court has now sentenced him to thirty years in prison. “Together with a colleague from the Green Left, I have lodged a question with the minister, asking him whether he believes that this Dutch citizen has had a fair trial,” says Van Bommel “We are also urging that someone from the embassy in Tehran visit Al Manouri in his cell at the earliest opportunity.”.