US must make up for Iranian scientist detention on trumped up charges: Judiciary official

The head of the Iranian Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights says the US must make up for the damage it incurred by the detention of an Iranian scientist for three years on trumped up charges.  

“The US regime must compensate for the damage caused as a result of three years of detention of an Iranian academician and scientist without reason,” Ali Baqeri Kani said Wednesday.

He made the remarks in a ceremony to welcome Sirous Asgari, a professor of material sciences at Iran’s Sharif University of Technology, who arrived back in the country earlier on Wednesday after nearly three years of detention in the US.

Baqeri said that the Iranian scientist was detained for the “crime” of obtaining knowledge.

Asgari, 59, arrived in the US in 2017 with valid passports and visas, but upon arrival, he discovered he was being prosecuted by the US government for alleged violations of sanctions law.

He was arrested in the United States on charges of fraud and theft of information relating to his work with a university in Ohio. The findings of his project, though, had already been published and made available online.