Homa Hoodfar, an Iranian-Canadian professor at Concordia University in Montreal, has been indicted in Iran on unknown charges, according to Iranian news agencies.
Hoodfar’s family told CBC News in June that she had been detained in Iran’s notorious Evin prison on charges of “co-operating with a foreign state.”
Hoodfar, who holds both Canadian and Iranian passports, is an anthropologist and teaches at Concordia. She’s a world expert on sexuality and gender in Islam, and has written a number of books and papers.
Iran’s semi-official ISNA and Tasnim news agencies on Monday quoted Tehran’s prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, as announcing charges had been filed specifically against Hoodfar and others:
- Siamak Namazi , an Iranian-American businessman.
- Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British woman who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency.
- Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who has done work for the American government.
Hoodfar, 65, was first arrested in March — shortly before she was to leave the country — by the counter-intelligence unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who searched her Tehran residence, and seized her personal computers, cellphone, and passport. They told her she could not leave Iran to return to Canada.
A spokesperson for Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion said last month the government considered her case “a priority.”