Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio about his 70-year-old constituent Kamran Hekmati, of Great Neck, N.Y., whom Iran has detained “unjustly,” the congressman said.
The “dual American-Iranian citizen was sentenced to prison during a visit to Iran earlier this year to see family, a trip he has made on multiple occasions without issue,” Suozzi wrote on Tuesday. “His alleged crime was attending his son’s bar mitzvah in Israel 13 years ago.”
The congressman said that Hekmati’s imprisonment “has deeply alarmed my constituents, particularly within the large Persian Jewish community on Long Island, and among his colleagues in the government of the Village of Great Neck Estates, where he serves on the Zoning Board of Appeals.”
“Mr. Hekmati is a respected and active member of our community and is currently battling aggressive bladder cancer,” he wrote. “The Iranian regime should release him immediately on humanitarian grounds.”
The Iranian regime jailing Hekmati also “highlights the Iranian regime’s ongoing pattern of malign behavior and raises serious concerns about the safety of other Americans in the region,” the congressman said.
