In early February 2018, Maryam Mombeini received a phone call asking her to come to Evin prison, the most feared place in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Two weeks before, her husband of 40 years, Kavous Seyed-Emami, professor at Imam Sadiq University, had been arrested. They were dual citizens of Iran and Canada. He had served as a managing director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation based in Tehran.
Her heart pounding, Ms. Mombeini rushed to the prison. She was met by a team of intelligence officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or “Sepah” as they are called in Iran. After interrogating Ms. Mombeini for several hours, Sepah officers allowed her to see her husband — that is, his dead body. It showed bruises and evidence of injections. According to the interrogators, Dr. Seyed-Emami had committed suicide.
