The prosecutor of Branch 1 of Iran’s Evin Court has extended the detention of British anthropologist Kameel Ahmady for another month, his wife told Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).

Ahmady, a British citizen of Iranian Kurdish origin, has been in custody since 11 August.

“On 11 September, I [was] referred to Shahid Moqadas Prosecutor’s Office (Evin Branch). I hoped a bail order would be issued for my husband. However, the prosecutor’s secretary told me that his arrest warrant had been extended for another month,” his wife Shafaq Rahmani told KHRN. 

Branch 1 of the Evin Public Prosecutor’s Office investigates Ahmady’s case, and prosecutor Ali Qanaatka of Branch 1 of Evin Court has extended his detention.

Mrs Rahmani said she was happy that she met Ahmady on 15 September for the first time since his arrest.

“Our child was also present at the meeting which lasted about 45 minutes and was held in one of the prosecutor’s waiting rooms with the presence of several security agents,” she said.

She added: “The day before, after two weeks of uncertainty, Kameel was able to call home and we had a short [phone] conversation.”

She said Ahmady seemed to be in “a good mental state”, although there are some concerns about his physical health, she said.

Ahmady is held in ward 2A of the Evin Prison, which is under the supervision of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC).

He was recently transferred from a solitary confinement cell to a three-persons jail cell.

When he met his wife, he had told her that his interrogations had been completed.

However, the authorities informed her that interrogations were still ongoing when she had visited the prosecutor’s office on 11 September.

She said Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht and Amir Raeesiant are her husband’s lawyers.  However, they have not yet been allowed to access the case or take part in the legal process because they are not on the list of what the government considers “trusted judicial lawyers” allowed to access security dossiers.

She expressed her hope that, given the conclusion of “preliminary investigations”, the lawyers could be able to access Ahmady’s case and meet the prosecutor.

According to a clause of Article 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, defendants of “security crimes” should select their lawyers only from the list of lawyers approved by the head of the judiciary during preliminary investigation.

This legislation has drawn widespread criticism from lawyers and rights organisations. The new deputy head of the judiciary has recently dismissed the article as a “disgrace to the law” and considers its ratification “a mistake.”

Ahmady’s wife, who is a political science researcher, met members of the Islamic Consultative Women’s Group last week as part of a public meeting at a parliament building.

Representatives at the meeting have promised her that they would look into her husband’s case.

The parliamentary Women’s Commission, as well as government and academic institutions have used the findings of many research projects conducted by Ahmady, including on “childbearing”.

He was busy preparing a research project on “white marriage” commissioned by the Iranian Interior Ministry and had held meetings with the deputy interior minister few days prior to his arrest.

Many media outlets have published material and interviews with the detained researcher on the outcome of his research projects.

Ahmady, a naturalised British citizen, originally comes from Iran’s Kurdish Naghadeh.  He lived in Tehran at the time of his arrest.

His research papers mainly took on topics related to issues around female genital mutilation, childbearing and what is known as “white marriage” in Iran.

According to his website, he recently worked on two research projects, one of them entitled “Story of the Forbidden City” on LGBT community in Iran, and the other headlined  “From Border to Frontier – A Comprehensive Research on Identity and Ethnicity in Iran”