On Friday, April 29, the day after Amir Abbas Fakhravar, the leader of the Confederation of Iranian Students, spoke to a suburban Chicago audience about the Green Revolution in Iran, his brother was kidnapped in Paris by Iranian agents and forcibly returned to Tehran.
Mohammad Reza “Arash” Fakhravar, Amir’s twenty-year-old brother was living under the protection of the French government after escaping from Iran in January. He had previously applied for asylum in the U.S. but was denied by the U.S. State Department. Details of the abduction are still coming in, but right now we know that on Friday, April 29, agents of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran kidnapped Arash off a Paris street and got him into an embassy vehicle with diplomatic plates. Claiming diplomatic privilege, the agents were able to get him past airport security and on to an Iran Air flight bound for Tehran. Arash’s family has not been able to obtain any information about his location or condition.
