The Islamic Republic Judiciary on October 1 accused Kurdish-British academic Kameel Ahmady of ‘foreign links’, saying that he has been arrested on “just grounds as he has had a secret link with institutions and agencies affiliated with foreign countries.”

“The case is in preliminary investigations and it is not important to us which security agency is following the case, rather, the charge is attributable and the reasons are justified,” Iranian Judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Esmaeili told reporters as per IRNA news agency.

Shafaq Rahmani, Kameel Ahmady’s wife, posted on Twitter in response to the claim that her husband’s research has all been done “scientifically and publicly in relation to academic centres and the results have been used by the official bodies, such as the Welfare Organization, the Women’s Research Centre and the Parliamentary Commission, the Ministry of home affairs, and the Center for State Women.”

“It is unreasonable to attribute his academic work to an affiliation with foreign institutions.”

The Iranian security forces arrested Ahmady in Tehran on August 10. He is held in ward 2A of the Evin Prison, which is under the supervision of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC).

Ahmady, a naturalised British citizen, originally comes from Iran’s Kurdish Naghadeh. He lived in Tehran at the time of his arrest.

According to his website, he recently worked on two research projects, one entitled “Story of the Forbidden City” on LGBT community in Iran, and the other headlined “From Border to Frontier – A Comprehensive Research on Identity and Ethnicity in Iran.”