Emad Shargi is an innocent 58-year old American citizen who has been wrongfully detained in Iran since April 2018. In 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on fabricated national security charges and has been subjected to intensive interrogations, inhumane prison conditions, and egregious due process rights violations.

Emad was first detained in Tehran on April 23rd, 2018. At the time, he and his wife, both Iranian-born American citizens of over 30 years, were visiting family in Tehran and staying in his wifes childhood home. In the middle of the night, over a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp officers (IRGC) scaled the wall around the home, broke in, and confiscated their belongings, including their passports, computers, and mobile phones. Emad was arrested and taken to section 2A of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

For 8 months, Emad was detained and interrogated under the harshest of conditions, with every single mundane detail of his life examined over and over again. Despite this, the IRGC found nothing to justify his detention. He was released in December 2018 and shortly thereafter, given an official Revolutionary court order declaring that their investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing. After those many months of isolation and psychological torture, Emad was told that his American passport would be returned and he would be allowed to leave Iran and reunite with his family and home in Washington, D.C. where he has lived for decades and received his undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Maryland and George Washington University, respectively. 

For 2 years, Emad waited patiently but instead of his passport, he was summoned in November 2020 and given a 10-year sentence, without a trial and for completely fabricated and utterly nonsensical charges,  despite having been officially cleared of all accusations and charges. He was again taken to Evin’s 2A and denied access to visitors or his lawyer until September 25, 2021, when he was finally moved out of solitary confinement to the public ward of Evin prison. Thankfully Emad survived the devastating fires and prison riots in October 2022. However, he continues to suffer in Evin prison to this day.