Iran is claiming the feds have illegally detained one of its best-known journalists who was in the US to work and visit family.

Marzieh Hashemi, an anchorwoman for Iran’s state-run English-language Press TV, was nabbed Sunday in St. Louis and taken to Washington, DC, by the FBI on a material witness warrant, according to her eldest son, Hossein.

Hashemi, 59, was born Melanie Franklin to a Christian family in New Orleans but also holds Iranian citizenship.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for her immediate release, telling Press TV that “we have a right to continue to look after her interests.”

“She is a famous journalist, she’s done nothing but journalism,” Zarif said. “The arrest of Ms. Hashemi is a very clear affront to freedom of expression, a political abuse of an innocent individual and I believe the United States should release her immediately without further delay.”

Hashemi visited family in New Orleans before filming a Black Lives Matter documentary in St. Louis.

The Vatan-e Emrooz paper ripped the detention as “Saudi-style behavior with a critical journalist” — a reference to the Oct. 2 assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

In an email, the FBI said it had no comment.

Hossein, a research fellow at the University of Colorado, said he and his siblings have been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

“We still have no idea what’s going on,” he said.

The son added that his mother — who has grandchildren — is “harassed on a regular basis when she goes to airports.”

“Whenever she boards a plane, prior to it she will have interviews or interrogation, if we might call it that — things that are not very typical is what she’s had to deal with for some time,” he said.



Hashemi’s detention comes amid diplomatic tensions between Iran and the US — which withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed strict sanctions on the country in May.

Iran is also facing its own criticism for arresting people with dual citizenship — which the country does not recognize — and others with Western ties.

Some of those cases have been used as bargaining chips in negotiations with world powers.

Under US federal law, judges are allowed to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case. They must also prove the witness would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena.

The statute generally requires those witnesses to be promptly released once they are deposed.

Hashemi studied journalism at Louisiana State University.

As a familiar face on Iranian television, Hashemi’s work and public comments mirror the country’s official ideology.

“When I got familiar with Islamic Revolution in Iran, and I saw it was a political and religious revolution, I was attracted to this,” Hashemi once told an interviewer in Farsi. “I saw this as a political movement to the revolution.”

Press TV, which launched in June 2007, is known for its fierce criticism of British and American foreign policy. The hashtag “Free Palestine” often appears in its stories on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

With Post wires