Professor Jailed in Iran for 'Dabbling in Feminism' Returns Home

More than 100 days since Homa Hoodfar was first detained and held in an Iranian prison, the Montreal college professor is now home.

"It's wonderful to be home and be united with family and friends again," Hoodfar told reporters at Montreal's airport Thursday morning. "I've had a bitter seven months, and the detention has really left me weak and tired."

The anthropologist from Concordia University was arrested on June 6 and accused of "dabbling in feminism and security matters" and attempting a feminist revolution against the government by the Tehran public prosecutor, according to Iranian news outlets. Hoodfar is an Iranian, Canadian, and Irish citizen.

"It is just wonderful to feel you are in a place that you feel secure, and you can see friends," she said. "It's not an expression that one can easily say: what it means to be home, after you have been prevented from being home."

Before her flight back to Montreal, Hoodfar reunited with her niece Amanda Ghahremani and stayed in Oman, located across the gulf from Iran, in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The Omani government was "instrumental" to her release, Hoodfar said, along with the Canadian government. Canada, which doesn't have an embassy in Iran, worked with officials from Oman, Italy, and Switzerland to get Hoodfar out of Iran.

"I didn't feel I would be released until I was in the jet, and the jet was in the air," she said. "In Iran, nothing is complete until it is complete."

The 65-year-old professor says she could not contact her lawyer or family while she was held at Evin prison in solitary confinement, and was denied access to her medication for a neurological condition that causes muscle fatigue. She was hospitalized in August because of her "rapidly declining health" and " was disoriented, severely weakened, and could hardly walk or talk," according to a statement from her family.

Ghahremani, who rallied support for her aunt in Montreal throughout the summer, said Hoodfar was thinner and weaker, but improving in the days since her release. "I hope that in a few months she returns to the way she was before," she said.

Hoodfar was visiting Iran for personal reasons, but carried out some research before she was detained. Her work focuses on Muslim women. In March, her family says she was about to leave the country when Iranian officials invaded Hoodfar's home, confiscating her passports, documents, and computer.

For her part, Hoodfar has no plans to return to Iran or leave Montreal for a while.

After months of organizing a movement to #FreeHoma, Ghahremani sat holding her aunt's hand, while passengers flowed through the Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport Thursday.

"All my life I have been media shy, I tried to stay in the background," Hoodfar said, smiling in front of dozens of journalists. "And now you see what the Iranian government has done."