The German-Iranian human rights activist Behrouz Asadi is making serious allegations: There is said to be a research assistant at the Technical University of Braunschweig who not only has family connections to Iran, but also actively works as an outpost of the regime. In an open letter addressed to the university management, Asadi calls for the young woman’s immediate dismissal.
The Iranian exile Asadi actually lives in Mainz and is chairman of the “Woman Life Freedom Germany” association worked for the Malteser in migration consulting for a long time. Last year he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. He says he found out about the events in Braunschweig from affected students: He gave his name and face for the campaign because they themselves were too afraid.
Asadi assures us that this is by no means a matter of shaming an individual. But the regime systematically combines cultural and security policy. The person in question, whom he also named, is the daughter of a man who has held high positions in Tehran for decades. He is currently a minister.
There are photos that show him next to high-ranking military and police chiefs, reports Asadi. These include people he holds responsible for the current massacres of demonstrators. There is still little news coming from Iran – but that the dead are counted in the thousandsno one actually disputes it anymore.
Exiled Iranians live in constant fear
And this man’s daughter, who studied architecture and civil engineering at the expensive elite university ETH Zurich, is said to be more than just a silent profiteer of the regime. “She constantly commutes between Tehran and Braunschweig,” says Asadi.
The affected students complained that on the one hand she tried to put the regime’s brutal actions into perspective, but on the other hand she also passed on the names of critical students – so that their families in Iran had problems.
Such an approach would not be atypical for Iran: transnational repression is the keyword that national and international security organs have to deal with again and again. Iran is not only spying on the exiled Iranian community and putting their remaining relatives in Iran under pressure. He is also held responsible for a number of assassinations and kidnappings on foreign soil.
In this case, however, Asadi cannot provide any concrete data or a more detailed description of the incidents. He justifies this with precisely those security concerns. This puts both the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science in a difficult position. The ministry explained that they are taking the information very seriously and want to check them Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung opposite on Friday.
It’s about the integrity of the German constitutional state and the security of democratic spaces
Behrouz Asadi, human rights activist
There was no comment from the university on Friday, Monday or Tuesday. But of course she is also in a dilemma: she has a duty of care towards both the employee and the students.
The hesitation is certainly not due to the university’s political stance: When protests formed at many universities in Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini and were brutally suppressed, the TU Braunschweig openly and clearly sided with the protesters. There are numerous Iranian exiles who studied here, including the current CDU member of the Bundestag, Reza Asghari.
Open letter also to Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt
The human rights activist Asadi would like an independent investigation by the ministry and the union to investigate how far the regime’s network at the TU Braunschweig reached.
“It has been documented for years, including internationally, that the iranian regimes systematically use academic, cultural and scientific structures as tools of influence and repression abused to to build networks abroad“To collect information, identify critics of the regime and infiltrate opposition structures,” says Asadi.
He therefore wrote another open letter to Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU). “This is not just about protecting Iranian exiles,” writes Asadi. “It’s about the integrity of the German constitutional state, the security of democratic spaces and the credibility of German human rights and security policy.”