After spending more than four months in an Iranian prison for allegedly being a political threat, a California mortgage broker said he was not shocked to return to a devastated U.S. mortgage market.
Ali Shakeri was one of four Iranian-Americans recently held in a Tehran prison based on charges of threatening Iran’s national security. News of his imprisonment sent shockwaves through members of the University of California’s Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, an organization he co-founded, and with U.S. diplomats.
He flew to Iran last March to be with his mother who was dying in the hospital. After her passing and settling her affairs, he was making his way back to the United States when he was detained while waiting to board his flight home to Irvine, Calif. — ground zero of the subprime mortgage meltdown.
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The initial interrogation was held in the basement of the Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran for an hour and a half, Shakeri said, and then almost daily while in prison. “It was kind of harsh but no physical punishment,” he told MortgageDaily.com in a telephone interview. At first he thought it was misidentification or a misunderstanding when several airport officials approached him. After the interrogation, they invited Shakeri to be their “guest” and imprisoned him without notifying anyone, he said. Meanwhile, his wife and children were at the Los Angeles International airport waiting for him to disembark the plane he was supposed to be on.
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Days passed before his family was told that Shakeri never boarded the expected flight and he was tagged as a missing person. Finally, after 60 hours of detention they let him phone home and make arrangements to get his required medication, he said.
“First they said it would be one or two days, but then it became a week, two weeks, then four months and 20 days,” he said.
They didn’t charge him with anything specific, citing only that he could have been a threat to the national security of Iran, which Shakeri vehemently denied and said was a political move by Iran brought on by the recent strain between the U.S. and Iranian governments.
“My arrest was part of the international confrontation between Iran and the U.S.,” he said. “If that would not have happened (the political unrest), I and others would not be arrested.
“I have peace mentality, peace activity, not exporting democracy, my concentration is to carry dialogue between [governments] and the gangs, to live peacefully domestically and internationally, I did not expect to be punished because of what I did — I am a peace builder.”
Shakeri said many diplomats pushed for his release, though he ultimately spent 140 days in prison — 114 of them in solitary confinement. Television, newspapers and literature were prohibited, he said, and he had to share shower and bathroom facilities with all the inmates in his cell row.
“The loneliness was the most difficult and most lowest part of my life, it caused people to suffer a lot,” he said. “I don’t wish it for even my enemy.”
After coming home earlier this month, he said he found it as no surprise that the mortgage industry and real estate market was in turmoil.
“I was expecting this to happen, the last six years I didn’t buy any real estate because I knew it would happen,” he said.
Shakeri, a mortgage broker for about 18 years, founded Global Estate Funding, Inc. in 1992, which has few employees and originates primarily A paper conforming first mortgages. He said he has no complaints even though business is slow right now and the bills have piled up due to his absence.
He estimated he has lost about $250,000.
For now, he has other concerns to worry about.
His home is just three miles from the biggest wild fire in history, he said in the interview earlier this week.
“All the foothill ranches are in trouble … I’m waiting to see if we have to evacuate, you can’t step out of the house, the smoke is killing you.”
His optimism isn’t fading though, he said.
“I’m a very positive man, I’m sure I will make it — hopefully a year from now it will be better.”
