AP Exclusive: US mum on Iranian scientist's arrest

[dipsydoodle]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For one 55-year-old professor, what started out as an overseas trip to the doctor has become part of the shadowy U.S. struggle with Iran.

The arrest in Los Angeles in December of Seyed Mojtaba Atarodi, a U.S.-educated electrical engineer who teaches at a leading Iranian university, comes as the U.S. uses export controls to try to restrict Iran's acquisition of U.S. technology, including for its military and nuclear programs.

But the Atarodi case bears another hallmark of the long-running U.S.-Iran conflict: It's cloaked in secrecy.

U.S. officials won't discuss the case or confirm that Atarodi has been charged. He has appeared in federal district court in San Francisco at least twice, but both proceedings were closed. The indictment against the Iranian microchip expert, who holds a U.S. green card, remains sealed nearly three months after his arrest at Los Angeles International Airport as he arrived from Iran.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRANIAN_SCIENTIST_ARRESTED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-29-06-49-14

[Ghost Dog]

1. Arbitrary Arrest

Arbitrarily arresting or detaining persons contradicts rule of law established in democracies as well as habeas corpus and is thereafter illegal in those regimes. In practice in the 2000s (decade), arbitrary arrest or detention (the definitions of these terms vary between different national jurisdictions) is typically tolerated by the legal system for a short duration, of a few hours up to a few days, in most democracies, especially in response to political street demonstrations. It is often a characteristic of dictatorships or police states, which may also engage in forced disappearance.[citation needed]

Virtually all individuals who are arbitrarily arrested are given absolutely no explanation as to why they are being arrested, and they are not shown any arrest warrant.[2] Depending on the social context, many or the vast majority of arbitrarily arrested individuals may be held incommunicado and their whereabouts can be concealed from their family, associates, the public population and open trial courts.[3][4] Many individuals who are arbitrarily arrested and detained suffer physical or psychological torture during interrogation, as well as extrajudicial punishment and other abuses in the hands of those detaining them.[citation needed]
[edit] International law

Arbitrarily depriving an individual of their liberty is strictly prohibited by the United Nations' division for human rights. Article 9 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights decrees that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile";[5] that is, no individual, regardless of circumstances, is to be deprived of their liberty or exiled from their country without having first committed an actual criminal offense against a legal statute, and the government cannot deprive an individual of their liberty without proper due process of law. As well, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifies the protection from arbitrary arrest and detention by the Article 9.[6]

/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary_arrest_and_detention