Amirentezam

A federal court awarded $19.5 million to the children of Abbas Amir-Entezam, deputy prime minister in Iran's first post-revolutionary government, holding Iran liable for torturing him during nearly four decades of imprisonment and house arrest.

At a glance

• Case: Amirentezam et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran and IRGC
• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 1:19-cv-02066
• Judge: Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey
• Decided / filed: September 5, 2023
• Violations: Torture
• Status: Judgment entered
• Judgment awarded: $19,500,000

Who he was

Abbas Amir-Entezam was born in Tehran in 1932 and studied in Tehran and the United States. In 1979 he became spokesman and deputy prime minister in Mehdi Bazargan's interim government, and then ambassador to Sweden and the Scandinavian countries. He received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights in 1997.

What happened

In December 1979, Iran recalled him from Sweden and arrested him on accusations of spying for the CIA. He was held in solitary confinement for more than a year without a lawyer or family access, convicted of espionage in 1981, and sentenced to life. He was held mainly in Evin Prison, endured solitary confinement, overcrowding and denial of medical care, and refused a conditional release that would have required him to admit guilt. He died on July 12, 2018, still under his life sentence, about 39 years after his arrest. His children never saw him free again.

What the court found

The court found it more likely than not that Amir-Entezam was tortured in Iranian prisons. Each of his three children received $3.25 million in compensatory and $3.25 million in punitive damages.

Why it matters

• This is the first court ruling to formally recognize that Amir-Entezam was tortured in Iranian custody.
• It documents the Islamic Republic's willingness to impose lifelong deprivation of liberty on senior figures of the early revolutionary period.

Sources and coverage

Court opinion · IranWire · VOA

Judgment amounts are the amounts awarded by the court, not amounts collected. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.