Germany’s Hostages in Iran, and “Critical Dialogue” with the Mullahs

Benjamin Weinthal im Weekly Standard:

Germany’s journalists, human rights activists, and taxpayers are paying a painful price for its country’s woefully flawed “critical dialogue” policy with the Iranian regime.

Last month, Iran’s rulers paraded two German journalists, Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch of the Bild newspaper, on an Iranian state-controlled television station, claiming that the two journalists admitted to being hoodwinked into travelling to Iran by Mina Ahadi, a German-Iranian human rights activist.

Ahadi, who lives in exile in Germany, is leading an international campaign against stoning in the Islamic Republic. She is deeply aware of the critical situation of the two journalists, saying, “They have been in prison for a month…no contact with their family, no phone contact, only once have German diplomats visited these journalists. They are under pressure.”

Both journalists were arrested in Iran in mid-October for merely interviewing family members of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman who was sentenced death by stoning for alleged adultery.

This is only the latest chapter in the Iranian regime’s history of doing what it can to crush dissent domestically and at the same time force Western European countries to recoil from their human rights criticisms of Iran’s ruthless behavior.

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