Hashemi detention shows US violating black people's rights: Iran FM

AVA- "The US govt needs to explain how Marzieh Hashemi—a journalist and grandmother—is such a flight risk that she must be incarcerated until she finishes her testimony to a grand jury," Zarif said in a post on his official Twitter account on Monday.
He pointed to the murder of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and added, "50 years after MLK assassination, US still violates the civil rights of black men and women."
Hashemi, a 59-year-old American-born Muslim convert who has been living in Iran for years, was detained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri last Sunday while she was in the US to visit her ill brother and other family members.
She was transferred to a detention facility in Washington DC, where she was forced to remove her hijab and only offered food not permissible under her Islamic values.
After days of silence, the US government confirmed on Friday that it was holding Hashemi in jail as a “material witness,” and that she would be released after she testified before a grand jury.