A Long Island jeweler who spent more than a year in custody has been released from one of Iran’s most infamous prisons, a facility long associated with allegations of inmate torture, the US State Department said Tuesday.
Kamran Hekmati, a resident of Great Neck Estates, was detained by Iranian authorities in May 2025 while in the country visiting relatives. Officials accused him of illegally traveling to Israel in 2012 to attend his son’s bar mitzvah.
“We welcome Mr. Hekmati’s release from detention and continue to call on the Iranian regime to lift the exit ban so that he may return home,” the State Department told Radio Farda, the Persian-language service of Radio Free Europe.
US Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents Great Neck Estates in Congress, described the development as “a wonderful first step.”
“His health is OK, but we need the Iranians to go the next step and let him come home,” Suozzi told Newsday.
Hekmati, a 71-year-old Jewish Iranian-American who operates a jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District, is believed to have been freed on Friday. But despite his release from detention, he remains stuck in Iran because authorities have not lifted a travel ban against him.
Iranian passport holders are prohibited from traveling to Israel, a restriction underscored by the deep hostility between Israel and the Islamic Republic following the 12-Day War in June 2025.
After Hekmati’s arrest by Iranian authorities in July 2025, Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced the American citizen to four years in prison over his visit to Israel.
His sentence was later reduced to two years after the statute was amended.
Hekmati spent over a year of his sentence imprisoned in Iran’s Evin Prison, a harsh facility known for excessive crackdowns, harsh beatings and other harrowing uses of unlawful force against prisoners, according to Amnesty International.
Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist who has been held in Evin since September 2024 in connection with his work for Radio Farda, was also wrongly detained in May 2025.
A voice recording made by Valizadeh, 49, inside the prison has raised alarms about the treatment of the hostages.
Valizadeh described “physical pressure and mental torture” he and several other detained Americans are enduring in a the recording obtained by CBS News in June, adding that they are “suffering from various diseases and are deprived of real medical services.”
Advocates claim Hekmati’s sentence lies in a legal gray area because of Iran’s 10-year look-back window on the Israeli travel ban — a law enacted after he visited the Jewish state, according to Newsday.
A Persian Jew, the jeweler immigrated to the US from Iran roughly 14 years ago. But the Long Islander always retained a love for his homeland — and never cut ties with it.
Even as Hekmati built a new American life — running a business in New York City’s Diamond District, while thriving in Long Island’s large Persian Jewish community — he regularly returned to Iran for sometimes months-long vacations and family trips, according to his family.
The US State Department did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
