INTERPOL Helping Iran to Harrass Dissidents

Disgusting:

Shahram Homayoun fled Iran for the United States 19 years ago. He was a marked man in his native country, because of his support for democracy and human rights.

Now the regime has finally caught up with Homayoun: not in Tehran, but in Los Angeles.

"They have managed to keep me here, and it seems like there is nothing the U.S. government can do," Homayoun told CBN News in an exclusive interview.

Homayoun owns a satellite television network in L.A. called Channel One TV. He broadcasts pro-democracy programming into Iran on a daily basis.

Now Iranian officials want to silence him -- permanently. A prosecutor in the Iranian city of Shiraz recently issued an arrest warrant against Homayoun on charges of terrorism.

Homayoun explained that he has never called for violence or terrorism of any kind against the Iranian government.

"Never," he said. "Even if the Iranian regime changes, we are encouraging people not to seek revenge. We are anti-terrorism."

Yet Homayoun is now a wanted man, unable to leave the U.S. for fear of arrest.

Marked as a Terrorist

The Iranian regime alerted INTERPOL, the global law enforcement organization, about Homayoun. The organization then issued what's known as a "Red Notice" against him. The Red Notice alerted all 188 INTERPOL member countries that Homayoun was wanted for terrorism.

Homayoun told CBN News that the terrorist charge has made his life extremely difficult.

"I received a notice from my bank in California letting me know about the INTERPOL arrest warrant," he explained. "After a few days, they closed my account. This was after 10 years that I had an account with this bank. I wanted to open an account at another local bank, and they turned me down as well because I was on the INTERPOL list of terrorists. My wife was also turned down when she tried to open an account."

Homayoun said he can't believe the irony of it all. He spends his days on TV speaking out against terrorism committed by the Iranian regime, which funds groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Now that very regime is accusing him of acts of terror in order to silence him -- and INTERPOL seems to be playing right along.

"You have a terrorist regime in Iran -- they whack their own dissidents inside the country. They've murdered over 200 opposition people outside the country. And now they're using the international police organization to go after those same dissidents," Iran expert Ken Timmerman said.

Timmerman told CBN News that INTERPOL should have thrown out the Iranian warrant against Homayoun immediately.

"INTERPOL should not be taking the word of the Iranian regime, a terrorist organization, to the bank," he said. "They should not be, without any kind of critical examination, accepting arrest warrants from the Iranian regime against people that they can easily verify their activities have nothing to do with terrorism, like Sharham Homayoun."