NEW YORK—Twenty former United Nations special human rights investigators added their voices on Wednesday to the growing calls for Iran to release a jailed Canadian-Iranian academic. They raised Homa Hoodfar’s case as the UN continued its general assembly in New York. The 65-year-old, who taught at Montreal’s Concordia University, has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since June 6. The former rapporteurs said Hoodfar’s academic work poses no threat to Iranian security and that she should be released immediately. “We stress that Iran is breaching its national constitutional principles by arbitrarily arresting and detaining people for simply expressing their opinion and conducting academic research, as is their professional right and duty,” they said in a statement.

Source: thestar September 14, 2016 16:30 UTC