{"id":199002,"date":"2019-12-08T09:21:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T09:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=199002"},"modified":"2019-12-11T07:15:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T07:15:01","slug":"us-jailers-had-told-inmates-i-was-a-terrorist-iranian-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=199002","title":{"rendered":"US jailers had told inmates I was a terrorist: Iranian scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Press TV \u2013 Dec 8, 2019<\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/00ZUnw0DGyc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Iranian stem cell scientist Dr. Masoud Soleimani, who returned home Saturday after being released from US prison, says his jail wardens had told other prisoners that he was a terrorist with a mission to carry out bombings in the United States.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Recounting his ordeal at the hands of American jailers, Soleimani described the United States\u00a0as &#8220;the number one enemy&#8221; of Iran and the Iranians.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Soleimani \u2014 who works in stem cell research, hematology and regenerative medicine \u2014 was on a sabbatical when he was\u00a0arrested by US\u00a0authorities upon arrival in Chicago a year ago and transferred to a prison in Atlanta, Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;US authorities\u00a0in the jail had told prisoners that I was\u00a0a terrorist who\u00a0wanted to carry out bombings in America,&#8221; he told reporters upon arrival at Tehran&#8217;s Mehrabad airport on Saturday night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;They had made such false statements so that other prisoners would not come close to me and keep away from me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;After a while, the inmates would tell me, &#8216;you do not look like a terrorist and a bomber, what these guys are\u00a0saying\u00a0and I would\u00a0tell them I don&#8217;t know what they are saying&#8217;,&#8221; he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Soleimani had been invited by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to lead\u00a0a research program there, but he was arrested upon arrival and secretly imprisoned without trial by the FBI on\u00a0October 7, 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">FBI authorities reportedly arrested him\u00a0on charges he had violated trade sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The charges related to September 2016 when\u00a0Soleimani had\u00a0seized on two\u00a0former students&#8217; plans to travel from the US\u00a0to Iran as a chance to get recombinant proteins used in his research for a fraction of the price he\u2019d pay at home. Recombinant proteins are found fundamentally in every medical testing and biological research laboratory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The students were arrested while departing the United States because they were carrying five vials of the proteins.\u00a0They were charged in a court and released after posting bail because they held US\u00a0citizenship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">However, about four months before Soleimani&#8217;s visit, an attorney\u00a0in Atlanta had\u00a0secured his indictment on June 12, 2018, just a month after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from\u00a0the Iran nuclear deal and announced sanctions under Washington&#8217;s &#8220;maximum pressure&#8221; on Tehran.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Soleimani had been fully unaware of such an indictment when he flew to the US. Moreover,\u00a0Washington had claimed\u00a0that maximum pressure did not target the supply of medicine and other humanitarian necessities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;The Americans were so mean and low\u00a0that when I told them that many patients were waiting for me to have their things done, they said, &#8216;let them die, it doesn&#8217;t matter&#8217;,&#8221; he said on Saturday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;This shows their main problem is with the Iranian people. They are upset and angry about the scientific progress and the right path that Iran has taken, and we have a duty to continue this\u00a0path so that the country can grow and prosper.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Soleimani suffered\u00a0from several health problems which aggravated during his incarceration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in September said in an interview with NPR that he had pushed for an exchange of a US\u00a0citizen held in Iran for espionage for Soleimani.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The prisoner exchange came on Saturday that saw the\u00a0Iranian scientist released for Xiyue Wang.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">According to American political analyst Scott Bennett,\u00a0the\u00a0Trump administration held the Iranian stem cell scientist hostage to gain leverage over the Islamic Republic through &#8220;diplomatic extortion.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">On Saturday, Trump bounced on the prisoner exchange\u00a0to claim a diplomatic triumph at a time when he is under immense pressure while\u00a0Democratic lawmakers\u00a0are making\u00a0a case to\u00a0impeach him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cThank you to Iran on a very fair negotiation,\u201d tweeted Trump.\u00a0\u201cSee, we can make a deal together!\u201d wrote the US leader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.presstv.com\/Detail\/2019\/12\/08\/613122\/Iran-Masoud-Soleimani-swap\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Iranian scientist, who has just been released by the U.S. in a prisoner swap, says warders told other prisoners that he was a terrorist who had been apprehended on a mission to carry-out bombings in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199002"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199010,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199002\/revisions\/199010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}