Iran confirms arrest of British-Iranian professor

A British-Iranian academic has been arrested in Iran on security charges, the country has confirmed.

Abbas Edalat, professor in computer science and mathematics at Imperial College London, was detained on 15 April, after being arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

Professor Edalat is the founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, an anti-war protest group.

The CHRI said that he travelled to Tehran to attend an academic workshop, and that guards confiscated a computer, CDs and notebooks during the arrest.

The Foreign Office said that it was “urgently looking into” the reports of his arrest.

Last year, Professor Edalat told Times Higher Education that he had stopped submitting research papers to US conferences in the wake of Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Several other Iranian dual nationals have been imprisoned in Iran in recent years.

CHRI executive director Hadi Ghaemi said that “Iran’s continued arbitrary arrests of dual nationals without transparency and lack of due process is extremely concerning”.

Last year, Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian researcher based at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, was sentenced to death in Iran on spying charges. He was granted Swedish citizenship earlier this year.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com