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　The Sasakawa Peace Foundation has invited Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to speak at the seminar detailed below, on June 5th, 2014.

　Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was born and grew up in Iran. She has lived in the United States since 1980, having left Iran upon the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
　Dr. Esfandiari was detained at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, from May 8 to August 21, 2007, for more than 110 days. On December 30, 2006, Dr. Esfandiari was robbed while on the way to the airport after visiting her mother in Tehran. During this incident, the men threatened to kill her; then they stole her baggage and both her U.S. and Iranian passports. Consequently, she was not permitted to leave the country. When she applied for new travel documents, she was instead barred from leaving Iran and interrogated over a period of six weeks by authorities from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. During the time, she was asked to confess to having taken part in anti-government activities, which she refused to do. Senator Hillary Clinton and US Congress called for Dr. Esfandiari's release, followed by the two large petitionsinitiated by the American Islamic Congress and the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. On August 21, 2007, Dr. Esfandiari was released on a bail. Her passport was returned and she left Iran on September 2. While the news of her detention was little known in Japan, it profoundly shook the US-Iran relations at that time.

Contacts:

The Sasakawa Middle East Islam Fund: Dr. Matsunaga and Ms. Fujimoto
Phone: 03-6229-5459, FAX: 03-6229-5473