ZCZC
BFF-28
IRAN-US-MEDIA-REZAIAN
Iran rejects US order to pay $180 mn over reporter’s jailing
TEHRAN, Nov 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Iran on Monday rejected a US court
order for Tehran to pay $180 million in damages to a Washington Post reporter
for jailing him on espionage charges.
Jason Rezaian spent 544 days in an Iranian prison before he was released
in January 2016 in exchange for seven Iranians held in the United States.
On Friday, a US district court judge ordered damages be paid to Rezaian
and his family in compensation for pain and suffering as well as economic
losses.
The Iranian foreign ministry’s spokesman described the journalist’s
decision to seek damages as “strange”.
“Mr Jason Rezaian… was a security convict and the Islamic Republic of
Iran commuted his (sentence of maximum punishment) to imprisonment,” said
spokesman Abbas Mousavi.
“He was pardoned and despite having an open case… he was released,”
Mousavi told a news conference in Tehran.
“For him to go there and lodge a complaint and for American courts to
lavishly determine such figures” was a course of action that Iran “rejects”,
said Mousavi.
“This was a favour that the Islamic Republic of Iran did for him,” he
said, adding that he could have been kept behind bars and punished more
severely. Mousavi said Iran could itself take similar legal action against
the United States, without elaborating.
Relations between arch-foes Tehran and Washington plunged to a new low
in May last year when the US withdrew from an international accord that gave
Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.
Rezaian and three other Americans were released on January 16, 2016, the
day the nuclear agreement entered into force.
BSS/AFP/RY/1541 hrs