Pegah Ahangarani in Custody of Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Agency

HRANA News Agency – On Sunday, July 10, 2011, four men and one woman entered Pegah Ahangarani’s house at 8:00pm, taking her and some of her personal belongings into custody.At the time of her arrest, the actress was home alone.Pegah Ahangarani was initially detained and held by Iran’s law enforcement intelligence apparatus until last night when she was released into the custody of the Intelligence and Security Organization of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Quoting an informed source, Deutsche Welle reported that Pegah Ahangarani contacted her mother briefly and was only able to say that she neither knew where she was nor what her crime was.

Pegah Ahangarani was scheduled to travel to Germany from July 4-12 to observe the events at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in order to write an editorial for Deutsche Welle.

One day before her trip to Germany, Iran’s Intelligence Agency contacted Pegah Ahangarani and warned her not to go to the airport.Otherwise, she would be arrested there.Consequently, Pegah Ahangarani cancelled her plans to travel to Germany.

Pegah Ahangarani’s last contact with her family was on Sunday, July 10, 2011 at about noon.Since then because there was no news from the actress, her family reported her disappearance.

Events Being Repeated

Similar to Pegah Ahangarani’s disappearance, Maryam Majd, an Iranian sports photo-journalist, was arrested in her house the night before her trip to Germany.Maryam Majd was expected to photograph the events at the FIFA Women’s World Cup as well.

In 2009, Deutsche Welle published an article authored by Pegah Ahangarani reporting on the events at Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).At the time before she traveled to Germany to report on Berlinale, threats were made against her in the state sponsored Keyhan newspaper, warning her not to sell out her country when she was abroad.

In addition to being an actress, Pegah Ahangarani is a documentary filmmaker.Her last documentary named “Dehnamakiha” is an unauthorized biography of Masoud Dehnamaki, a conservative Iranian activist and Hezbollah leader turned filmmaker.Dehnamakiha was shown by BBC Persian TV a few weeks ago.At the time of its release, Pegah Ahangarani was quoted to tell her friends that she was interrogated by the Iranian Intelligence Agency because of this documentary.

Manijeh Hekmat, an Iranian film director, is Pegah Ahangarani’s mother who has been silent so far about her daughter’s disappearance and has not granted any interviews.HRANA’s attempts to reach Manijeh Hekmat have been unsuccessful.

 

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