[caption id="attachment_108831" align="alignright" width="234"] The Washington Post's Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian[/caption]
A senior US official has called for the release of Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran, Jason Rezaian, after a top Iranian judicial official confirmed his apprehension.
“There is absolutely no reason for this to occur,” Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said at a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

She expressed concerns over the arrest of the Post’s Iran correspondent and said the US State Department has used “the appropriate channels, principally the Swiss,’’ to convey its message to Iranian authorities.

Sherman’s remarks came after the top Iranian judicial official on July 25 confirmed that Rezaian has been apprehended.

“Probe into the case is still in the preliminary stage, and information on that can be made public [only] after technical investigations and interrogation,” Director General of the Judiciary’s Tehran Province Office Gholam Hossein Esmaeili said regarding the detention of Rezaian and those accompanying him.

On July 24, the Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that Rezaian, a 38-year-old dual Iran-US citizen, and his Iranian wife Yeganeh Salehi were arrested on July 22 in Tehran.

According to the Washington Post, two other American citizens also detained with them work as freelance photojournalists.

Meanwhile, Rezaian’s mother, Mary, issued an appeal on video on Tuesday calling on Iran to release her son and his wife.

Rezaian has been The Post’s correspondent in Tehran since 2012, and his wife works as a correspondent for the National, a newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates.

By Press TV

 

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