An Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, set up in The Hague under a 1981 bilateral agreement, has been litigating on claims by the two hostile countries. The United States froze Iranian assets, originally worth billions of dollars, after Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran following the 1979 Islamic revolution. The militants held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year. Unlike many modern poets, who had fraternised with the Russian-backed communist movement in past times, Moshiri had remained nationalist and his epic verse flowed with romance. A former state employee, Moshiri was on the book committee of Iran's prestigious Ketabsara publishing house up to his death.
Poetry commands a wide audience in Iran, where sales of other books are comparatively small.
The Islamic association of students at Sharif University of Technology protested at the charges brought by the Special Court for Clergy, controlled by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a statement sent to Reuters on Saturday. The court, which answers only to the leader, ordered Yousefi-Eshkevari's arrest on August 5 on his return to Iran after attending a conference on the future of Iran's reforms in Berlin. His trial was held behind closed doors. All hearings took place with a court-appointed lawyer representing him. In those days the reactionary officials of the Church would issue death sentences for apostasy, while today the same narrow-mindedness has been manifested in the officials of the Special Court.