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PP RUEHBC RUEHKUK RUEHMOS
DE RUEHDE #1075/01 0581339
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P R 271339Z FEB 06
FM AMCONSUL DUBAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8698
INFO RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE
RUEHDE/AMCONSUL DUBAI 1621
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DUBAI 001075 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
LONDON FOR TSOU; PARIS FOR ZEYA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  2/27/2016 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV IR SOCI
SUBJECT: AKBAR GANJI'S SENTENCE UP MARCH 17 
 
 
DUBAI 00001075  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Jason L Davis, Consul General, Dubai, UAE. 
REASON: 1.4 (d) 
 
1.(C) Summary:  Iranian political prisoner Akbar Ganji is 
eligible for release March 17.  It is not yet clear whether he 
will be released or whether the government will find a reason to 
keep him in jail.  If he is released, he may be "asked" to leave 
the country.  A human rights activist is calling on the USG to 
send Iran a clear message of its continued concern about Ganji's 
fate, as well as to do more with Iranian dissidents who have 
left Iran in recent years.  End summary 
 
2.(C) According to Iranian press, political prisoner Akbar 
Ganji's six-year prison sentence expires March 17.  A U.S.-based 
official from Human Rights Watch (in the UAE to prepare a report 
on migrant labor in UAE) told PolEconChief it was likely Ganji 
could be brought up on new charges related to his anti-regime 
writings smuggled out of prison.  (Note: In Iran it is not 
uncommon for political prisoners to be sent back to prison on 
new charges after their release.)  The official urged the USG to 
publicly call for Ganji's release.  He said the Iranian people 
get confused when the USG takes up a human rights case and then 
drops it.  He added the Iranian government counts on us losing 
interest or getting distracted.  In an open letter February 20 
published online, Ganji's wife says Iranian officials have 
abandoned him in solitary confinement in a prison section 
controlled by IRGC intelligence, despite his continuing health 
problems.  She writes that they are trying to forget about him 
and are trying to get the public to forget him as well. 
 
3.(C) An Iran-based political and economic analyst predicted, in 
contrast, that Ganji would likely be released at the end of his 
sentence and asked to leave the country.  Bijan Khajehpour 
(please protect), who recently spoke on Iran at a number of 
Washington think tanks, told PolEconChief that this prediction 
was based on the government's behavior in similar cases in the 
past.  He cited dissident journalists/former political prisoners 
Massoud Behnoud, who now writes for Rooz.online, an online 
newspaper based outside of Iran, and Ebrahim Nabavi, an exiled 
satirist who now writes for the Internet site Gooya, as well as 
Rooz. 
 
4.(C) When asked why the Iranian government would allow Ganji to 
leave, Khajehpour said Iranian officials are only afraid of 
people they think have credibility in the eyes of both the elite 
and the wider population and who can thus mobilize the masses. 
The government believes dissidents lose this status once they 
leave the country. 
 
5.(C) The HRW official shared the view that the Iranian 
government believes dissidents become inactive or ineffective 
when they leave the country.  The HRW official blamed the lack 
of a good network to absorb Iranian dissidents abroad and make 
effective use of them as part of the problem.  The Iranian 
government knows that as new immigrants, they will likely have 
to devote most of their efforts to getting by economically (the 
HRW official cited a famous Iranian cartoonist who still 
publishes on Rooz.online, but works nights in Canada at a 
drycleaners to make ends meet.)  The HRW official also accused 
the Iranian government of threatening the families of expatriate 
dissidents, citing the case of a blogger who initially spoke out 
against the government after he was allowed to leave the country 
but then went mute after his father was detained in Iran.  The 
HRW official pressed the USG to make better use of this new wave 
of Iranian dissidents abroad, perhaps by employing them at VOA's 
Farsi television program. 
 
6.(C) Comment: We agree that now would be an opportune time for 
the U.S. and others to remind the Iranian government that the 
international community continues to follow Ganji's case and 
expects him to be released when his sentence is up.  Although 
Iran prickles when it feels it is being told what to do, there 
have been several cases in recent years when it has buckled 
under public pressure on human rights cases.  It is hard to say 
what the short-term impact past USG statements on Ganji's case 
have had, but the majority of our interlocutors believe that 
overall, public statements on specific human rights cases in 
Iran yield long-term positive results.  There may be elements of 
the government looking for an excuse to keep Ganji under lock 
and key.  Other parts, however, may recognize that releasing him 
after his sentence is served does not cause them to lose face 
and can in fact get rid of one albatross around their neck in 
the eyes of the world community. 
 
7.(C) Comment continued: We think there is merit in the idea of 
recruiting more newly-arrived Iranian dissidents to work on 
VOA's expanded Iran programming, although those people who hope 
to return in the near future to Iran are unlikely to want to 
 
DUBAI 00001075  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
affiliate themselves so closely with the USG.  We would also 
suggest searching out dissidents from Iran's various ethnic 
groups to help produce programming in their native languages to 
target those populations. 
DAVIS