BERLIN – The Netherlands froze diplomatic relations with Iran last month because
of the execution of Zahra Bahrami a Dutch-Iranian woman, and on Monday, The
Hague recalled its ambassador to Teheran.
“What happened between that
moment [two days before the hanging, when Bahrami saw her mother] and the moment
of execution we do not know.
We have not found that out. We support the
family at every level in their effort to obtain the body to either bury her
there or get it repatriated,” Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal, who is
currently in Israel, said last week.
Rosenthal termed the hanging of the
45-year-old Bahrami the “shocking act of a barbaric regime.”
Bahrami
traveled to Iran in 2009 and was arrested while participating in demonstrations
against the disputed presidential election. Prosecutors initially said she
belonged to the militant monarchist group Kingdom Assembly of Iran, and accused
her with setting up an anti-regime organization and spreading anti-regime
propaganda. They then charged her with drug trafficking, and she was hanged on
January 31.
According to the widely read Iranian website Balatarin,
Bahrami “was not hanged but rather she was martyred under torture (rape). The
regime hastily announced that it had hanged her without notifying her lawyer and
her family members and because of the signs of torture, it refuses to hand in
her body.”
The US and the EU condemned the execution. Iran has
implemented a wave of reportedly extra-judicial executions.
The Islamic
Republic has hanged 67 people since the beginning of 2011, according to an AFP
survey.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on
Tuesday that the Netherlands was making “a human rights issue out of an
indefensible drug case and applying political pressure” on his
country.
“The behavior of these statesmen is turning their countries into
a sanctuary for criminals, smugglers and terrorists,” Mehmanparast
said.
The Dutch government appears to be the first EU country to recall
its top diplomat to Iran due to human rights violations. During the protests
against the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, British Embassy
workers and a French citizen were arrested and incarcerated, but the French and
British governments chose not to recall their ambassadors. The arrest of two
German reporters in October did not prompt Berlin to take strong diplomatic
action against Teheran.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, along
with his Italian counterpart, Franco Frattini, was the first top EU diplomat
last week to congratulate Iran’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Ali Akbar
Salehi, according to the Iranian ISNA news service. Salehi has been designated
by the EU as a sanctioned official because of his work on Teheran’s nuclear
program. He is barred from travel to the EU.
A spokesman for the Foreign
Ministry in Berlin wrote
The Jerusalem Post by email on Tuesday, “The German
government is making strong efforts to bring back the detained German
journalists safe and quickly to Germany. In this regard, talks also take place
between Foreign Minister Westerwelle and his Iranian
counterpart.”
Critics accuse the German foreign minister of a soft
posture toward Iran because of the countries’ roughly 4 billion euro annual
trade relationship.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 11 US senators
issued a toughly worded letter to Westerwelle last week, urging the German
government to immediately close Iran’s main financial conduit in Europe – the
Hamburg-based European- Iranian Trade Bank AG (EIH).
The US placed EIH
under sanctions because of its involvement in Teheran’s nuclear and missile
programs.
“EIH is one of Iran’s few remaining access points to the
European financial system,” the letter says. “The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran
is undeniable and we must make sanctions as strong as possible to deny Iran the
economic means to develop those weapons.”
The letter also noted “The bank
has and continues to conduct transactions on behalf of entities under US and EU
sanctions, including Bank Mellat, a designated supporter of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran... Companies that continue to conduct trade with Iran via
EIH also face potential sanctions in the US, including restrictions on exports
to the US and access to US capital markets.”
A spokesman for the German
Foreign Ministry wrote the Post by e-mail, saying “EIH stands under strict
control of the German bank authorities. We pursue all indications of relevant
proliferation activity. This affects all companies in Germany, including
EIH.”
A spokesman for the American Embassy in Berlin told the Post, “No
comment. The senators’ letter speaks for itself.”