THE HAGUE – The Netherlands said on Monday it had summoned Iran’s ambassador in The Hague to protest the hushed burial of a Dutch citizen after she was executed by the regime in Tehran. A foreign ministry spokesman said the Dutch ambassador to Tehran was also being brought back to The Hague for consultations after Zahra Bahrami was buried in the absence of her family who had wished to be present.
“We were taken aback by the manner in which Mrs Bahrami’s remains were treated, and we want to protest the lack of respect shown to her family,” the spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told AFP. The Iranian ambassador, Kazem Gharib Abadi, was summoned to the Dutch foreign ministry in The Hague, where he met a senior official on Monday morning, said the spokesman.
“The meeting took place, and we relayed our message,” Van Loosdrecht said, declining to go into further detail. The Netherlands had also decided to consult its own ambassador, Cees Kole, on the matter. Kole would seek a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister and report back in The Hague. Bahrami, a 46-year-old Iranian-born naturalised Dutch citizen, was hanged on January 29 after being convicted of a drugs offence.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said cocaine was found in a search of her home. She was initially arrested in the aftermath of the widespread protests in 2009 that followed disputed elections in Iran. Her execution last month prompted the Dutch government to freeze all contact with what it labelled a barbarous regime.
