Emami was buried on Monday, but several members of the organisation he founded, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, remain in jail and the deputy head of the Environmental Protection Organisation, Kaveh Madani, was detained for 72 hours over the weekend.
The judiciary said the Iranian-Canadian professor was a CIA-Mossad agent who killed himself in prison, though his family dispute this and have filed a complaint. The Canadian government has also pressed Iran for answers about the death of one of their dual-national citizens.
Officials say he and his associates used surveys of endangered Asiatic cheetahs as a pretext for spying in strategically sensitive areas.
No evidence for these allegations has been presented, prompting concerns that the revolutionary guard may have targeted the wildlife group because many of its members are binational figures who were educated in the west and have connections with international conservation groups.
“Environmental rights are human rights, and we all have an obligation to protect them. We are closely following these cases in Iran and urge that the work of environment defenders – both in Iran and around the world – be promoted and respected,” said UN Environment head, Erik Solheim.
Among those who have been detained for the past few weeks is Niloufar Bayani, who was research fellow with the Wildlife Conservation Society and supported UN Environment projects in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Haiti. She returned to Iran, her birthplace, last June to join the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation.
Source: theguardian
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