'Bring us home': American held in Iran ends weeklong hunger strike
“Don't let President Biden leave us in this abyss of misery,” Siamak Namazi said in a letter penned from prison.
WASHINGTON — Siamak Namazi, a US citizen detained in Iran since 2015, ended his weeklong hunger strike on Monday with an urgent plea to the Biden administration to do what is necessary to secure his freedom.
Namazi, currently the longest-held American prisoner in Iran, launched his seven-day strike to mark “each of the seven years of freedom” he has lost behind bars, describing his hunger protest as "a prisoner's weapon of last resort."
Following his October 2015 arrest, Namazi was the only American not returned home from Iran as part of a January 2016 prisoner swap negotiated under the Obama administration, nor was he included in either of the Trump administration-brokered deals to release two American detainees.
The Biden administration says it is “working tirelessly” to free Namazi and Iranian-Americans Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, who also holds British citizenship. All three detainees, as well as US permanent resident Shahab Dalili, are held on espionage charges that their families dismiss as baseless.
