The prison cell that has been Jason Rezaian’s home for most of the past 141 days has no mattress. He has slept on blankets on the hard floor and awakened each morning with back pain, for which he has received no treatment. 
 
 He suffers from chronic eye infections that have persisted for so long his family fears permanent damage to his vision. For more than a month, he has been afflicted by a groin inflammation so painful he sometimes has trouble standing. 
 
 Almost five months after Rezaian’s still-unexplained arrest, family members say conditions in Iran’s Evin prison are taking a fearsome toll on the 38-year-old Tehran correspondent for The Washington Post. But even worse than the physical discomforts, they say, are the psychological effects from near-total isolation and uncertainty over how long the ordeal will last. The uncertainty deepened further Sunday withIran’s announcement that formal charges — still unspecified — have been filed. 
 
 “Every day, we’re in new territory,�? Rezaian’s brother, Ali, a California businessman, said in an interview. “Never has a Western journalist been held this long. It’s taking a devastating toll on him, physically and mentally.�? 
 
 Worry over Rezaian’s health has prompted family members to speak in unprecedented detail about his well-being as he nears the end of his fifth month in detention. 
 
 Mary Rezaian pleads for the Iranian government to release her son, Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, and his wife Yeganeh Salehi. The two were arrested on July 22 on undetermined charges in Tehran along with another couple. Rezaian remains in custody, while Salehi and the couple have all been released. (Provided to The Washington Post) 
 
 In interviews, relatives spoke of his growing despair in recent weeks as Iranian officials repeatedly dangled the possibility of freedom and then took it away again. 
 
 Iranian officials have kept Rezaian in solitary confinement for most of his time in detention, never allowing him to meet his attorney and permitting only a handful of visits with his wife and one other relative, family members say. 
 
 He was not allowed to contact his U.S.-based family until two weeks ago, when he was permitted to call his mother on Thanksgiving Day. 
 
 “At first, I thought he sounded great, but as we talked, I could tell he wasn’t,�? Mary Breme Rezaian said of the conversation. “We tried to talk about past things and previous Thanksgivings, but we both kept breaking down in tears.�? 
 
 Rezaian, a San Francisco native and son of an Iranian immigrant, was arrested at his Tehran home July 22 with his wife, Iranian journalist Yeganeh Salehi. She was released on bail in October, but Iranian officials extended Rezaian’s detention for an additional two months, citing an ongoing investigation. 
 
 In Iran, the filing of formal charges sometimes can lead to a release after a bail hearing, but it also throws new uncertainty into the case, including the possibility of more delays, according to human rights experts familiar with the country’s legal system. 
 
 “In national security cases, the judge can renew temporary pretrial detention indefinitely,�? said Faraz Sanei, an Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch. “And [the judge] can prevent lawyers speaking to clients or accessing files.�? 
 
 No public explanation has been provided for the arrests, and Iranian officials did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment for this article. 
 
 Some experts have speculated that Rezaian has been caught up in a domestic power struggle between Iranian political factions feuding over Tehran’s recent diplomatic opening toward the West. Iran’s influential Human Rights Council secretary, Mohammed Javad Larijani, last week called the case a “fiasco�? and expressed hope that the matter would be quickly resolved. 
 
 The Obama administration, which is engaged in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, has stepped up pressure on Iran’s government in the past week. 
 
 On Sunday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry urged Iran to drop the charges against Rezaian, saying the journalist “poses no threat to the Iranian government or to Iran’s national security.�? A State Department spokesman said Tuesday that the United States remained “committed to returning Jason Rezaian to his family, friends and loved ones.�? 
 
 But with no end to the ordeal in sight, the Rezaian family’s frustration is growing. Relatives have begun to speak more candidly, drawing on details provided by visitors to paint a portrait of Rezaian’s life since his arrest. Their account, which matches descriptions by former inmates of Evin prison, depicts an endless cycle of physical deprivation, extreme isolation and frequent interrogations apparently aimed at coercing Rezaian to confess to wrongdoing. 
 
 “It is constant pressure for him: psychological pressure, interrogation tactics,�? Ali Rezaian said. “They’re trying to manipulate his psychological state, to get misinformation to make him more compliant with what they want him to do.�? 
 
 Since the day of his arrest, relatives say, Rezaian has been mostly kept in solitary confinement in Evin, a fortress-like prison on Tehran’s outskirts originally built by Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Former prisoners who spent time in Evin’s solitary-confinement unit described cramped cells that are miserably hot in the summer and cold in winter. 
 
 One former inmate, Iranian-born scholar and author Haleh Esfandiari, recalled a lack of amenities other than a sink, a pair of blankets and a Koran. Esfandiari spent 105 days in Evin and, like Rezaian, had no mattress. 
 
 “The door is locked, and you’re on your own,�? said Esfandiari, who now directs the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank. 
 
 “To go to the bathroom, you have to knock on the door. The whole idea [is] to move you to despair, to make you feel isolated,�? she said. “They keep repeating that no one in the outside world cares about you.�? 
 
 For Rezaian, the ordeal has been complicated by health problems. The journalist was being treated for high blood pressure at the time of his arrest, and family members worried that a combination of stress and a lack of access to medicine could aggravate his condition. 
 
 Rezaian eventually was given an Iranian version of his blood-pressure medication, but in 
 
 the meantime, other problems emerged. 
 
 His chronic eye infections went untreated for weeks, and the symptoms have continued since the prison recently began administering eye drops, family members said. 
 
 More troubling is a testicular inflammation that surfaced about a month ago and causes bouts of excruciating pain, family members said. In recent days, Rezaian was given a sonogram to determine the cause of the inflammation, but the results of the tests are not yet known. 
 
 “They’ve been undertreated,�? Ali Rezaian said of his brother’s medical problems. “He has been able to see a doctor twice, but in both cases it took over a month of efforts and him complaining about conditions.�? 
 
 He described his brother as “very depressed, almost to the point of losing hope.�? 
 
 Rezaian’s surprise telephone call at Thanksgiving brought a measure of relief, ending a four-month drought in direct contact between the prisoner and his U.S. relatives. 
 
 Mary Rezaian said she spoke with her son for half an hour, but she was acutely aware that others were present in the room with her son and listening to the conversation. 
 
 “There were topics I could not begin to address,�? she said. “Both of us were bemused to be speaking to one another. There was not advanced warning, so we couldn’t really prepare.�? 
 
 Although other journalists have been arrested in Iran, Rezaian did not expect that he would be targeted, his mother said. 
 
 Rezaian had taken great care not to touch any of the tripwires that had gotten other journalists in trouble with Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the agency that grants credentials to foreign journalists. 
 
 “He knew about the high- 
 
 profile cases where people had broken the rules,�? she said. “He followed the rules.�? 
 
 She said her son did not complain about his plight during his Thanksgiving phone call other than to express regret about upsetting the family’s holiday plans. Before his arrest, Rezaian had expected a visit home for the holidays with his wife, the first since their recent marriage. 
 
 “I was really hoping to bring Yegi this year,�? he told his mother, using his wife’s nickname. 
 
 Mary Rezaian tried to be reassuring during the call, thinking at the time that her son probably would be released soon, she said. After all, he had not been charged with a crime, and the clock was running down on the 60-day extension that had kept him locked up since October. 
 
 “The expectation was that we’d be seeing each other,�? she said. 
 
 The announcement of formal charges against Rezaian came nine days later. 

 TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A Washington Post journalist detained in Iran for months has been indicted and will stand trial, Iran's state news agency reported Wednesday, without elaborating on what charges he faced. 
 
 The report by the official IRNA news agency came the same day as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif before talks with world powers resume over the Islamic Republic's contested nuclear program. 
 
 It wasn't immediately clear if the two events were connected, though Zarif earlier said he hoped the case against reporter Jason Rezaian could be "resolved." 
 
 "We will have to wait for the judiciary to move forward, but we will try to provide all the humanitarian assistance that we could," Zarif told journalists in Geneva. "We hope that this issue could be resolved but unfortunately there are judicial issues involved which the judiciary has to deal with." 
 
 IRNA quoted Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi saying Rezaian, the newspaper's bureau chief in Tehran since 2012, had been indicted. He was previously charged last month, but the bill of indictment clears the way for his trial. 
 
 Rezaian, an Iranian-American who holds dual citizenship, has been held since July 22. The IRNA report did not disclose what charges he faces. However, the report says he will stand trial in Iran's Revolutionary Court, which mostly hears cases involving security offenses. 
 
 The Post, U.S. officials and Rezaian's mother have repeatedly called for his release. Officials at the Post could not be immediately reached for comment. 
 
 IRNA quoted the prosecutor as saying Rezaian's mother met twice with him on her recent visit to Iran. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Geneva and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this report. 

 Iran Family of US reporter jailed in Iran tells of 'inconceivable' five-month ordeal Washington Post reporter arrested in July with wife and another couple 
 
 Held 153 days, the longest any western journalist has been detained in Iran 
 
 Iran charges Washington Post reporter 
 
 
 
 Washington Post reporter facing interrogation as Iranian 
 
 The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian suffers from chronic high blood pressure and has other health problems. Photograph: Zoeann Murphy/Reuters 
 
 For five months, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian has slept on the concrete floor of his cell, waking each morning to relive the nightmare that is solitary confinement in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons. 
 
 Rezaian, an Iranian-American who holds dual citizenship, was arrested under dubious circumstances in July and jailed at Evin prison in Tehran, where he has been held for the past 153 days – the longest any western journalist has been detained in Iran. 
 
 The 38-year-old reporter was arrested with his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who is also a journalist, and an American couple, who have not been identified. 
 
 Of the four, Rezaian is the only one still in prison. He was not formally charged until 6 December, and, even now, the nature of those charges has not been disclosed. 
 
 “Very early on, our hope was that this would resolve itself in a few days or weeks,” Jason’s brother Ali Rezaian told the Guardian. “Looking back, it’s inconceivable that we’re here now, five months later and still in this situation.” 
 
 According to his brother, Rezaian is being held in a bare prison cell, where he is forced to sleep on the hard floor. His physical and mental health are deteriorating, and his family is deeply concerned his prolonged detention will cause permanent damage, Ali said. 
 
 He has spent days at a time locked in his cell without seeing another human being other than his guard, according to his brother. Other days, interrogators will question him for hours, Ali said. 
 
 In the first months of his detention, Rezaian lost nearly 20% of his body weight, which has caused new health problems, his brother said. 
 
 Rezaian suffers from chronic high blood pressure – for which the prison is providing him with the Iranian version of his prescribed medication – and he is also afflicted with recurring eye infections and an inflammation of his groin. 
 
 “It’s a horrible situation for him to be in, especially because he hasn’t done anything to be in there in the first place,” Ali said. “He knows what’s going on. He knows that he’s the longest-held western journalist now and it’s taken a real toll on him. His mental situation is really at risk.” 
 
 Rezaian has been denied bail, a translator or access to an attorney. He is allowed brief visits from his wife, who was recently allowed to bring him warm clothes. 
 
 But his US relatives went four months without hearing Rezaian’s voice. On Thanksgiving Day, his mother, Mary Breme Rezaian, received a surprise phone call from the Iranian prison. 
 
 Mary Rezaian told the Washington Post that she spoke with her son for nearly a half hour that day. At the time, Jason Rezaian had not been formally charged, and the window for his extended detention had nearly come to a close. She said they hung up hopeful that they’d be seeing each other soon. 
 
 Rezaian, the son of an Iranian immigrant father and an American mother from Chicago, was born and raised in Marin County, just north of the San Francisco Bay Area. He left California to attend college at the New School in New York. He later returned to the Bay area to help his father run the Persian rug stores he owned before turning to journalism. 
 
 From 2005 to 2007, Rezaian wrote a blog called Inside Iran for the San Francisco Chronicle, before moving to Tehran permanently in 2008. 
 
 “He wanted people to know that Iranians have the same aspirations and hopes and dreams for their families that people all around the west and everywhere else do, and to get rid of this one-dimensional view of Iran,” Ali said. 
 
 Even though his family knew the potential risks of his reporting in Tehran, Rezaian was very careful not to cross the invisible lines set for reporters and “always followed the rules”, his brother said. 
 
 “He was always on the straight and narrow,” Ali said. “He knew what he could and couldn’t do there.” 
 
 Rezaian freelanced for a string of publications before becoming the Post’s Tehran correspondent in 2012. A year later, he married Salehi, an Iranian journalist who worked as a correspondent for the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper the National. Salehi had recently been granted permanent residency in the US. 
 
 Before their arrest, Rezaian had been in Vienna covering the latest developments of crucial international talks over Iran’s nuclear program. One of the last stories he published was about baseball in Iran. 
 
 On 22 July, Iranian security officials wearing plainclothes raided the couple’s apartment and confiscated laptops and documents. Waving an arrest warrant, they took Jason and his wife, and an American couple, who were later released. Salehi was released on bail in October, but her husband’s detention was extended by two months. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jason Rezaian in 2013. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP 
 
 Ali said that under the conditions of Salehi’s bail, she is no longer allowed to work as a journalist. Neither she nor her family has spoken to the media. 
 
 “It’s been very, very difficult on Yegi,” Ali said, calling Salehi by her nickname. “The entire process has been extremely isolating. And she’s been prevented from a lot of things. She can’t travel, she can’t work. She’s been prevented from talking to an attorney. There’s also a social stigma around it, and because of that, while they’re in this process, they are very isolated, which has been very difficult for her and her family.” 
 
 Rezaian was formally charged by the Iranian judiciary on 6 December during a marathon court session in Tehran. The judge denied his request for bail. 
 
 “The Iranian government has never explained why Jason was detained or why he has been held for more than four months without access to a lawyer,” the Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, said in a statement on 6 December, the day charges were brought against Rezaian. 
 
 “Jason is an American citizen who was acting as a fully accredited journalist. If he has indeed been charged, we know that any fair legal proceeding would quickly determine that any allegations against him are baseless.” 
 
 Five months after his arrest, Rezaian’s family have still not been told what the charges against him are, nor have they seen any evidence against him. Ali Rezaian said he was not even sure his brother, who speaks but does not read or write Farsi, understands the charges against him. Jason has not been provided with a translator. 
 
 “I don’t think he even understands exactly what the charges are,” Ali said. “At least, I know he has been unable to communicate with anybody what they were.” 
 
 If history is a guide, experts say, the nature of the charges against Rezaian are likely trumped up – and linked to national security. The US State Department has repeatedly called on Iran to drop the charges against Rezaian and immediately release him, along other Americans still jailed in the country. 
 
 Iran and the US severed diplomatic ties three decades ago during the hostage crisis that followed the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since then, the two countries have competed for influence in the Middle East, at odds over the Israel-Palestinian conflict as well as the bloody civil war in Syria. In recent months, the Obama administration has been engaged in continued talks with over how to resolve Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, which the US views as a major regional threat, although Tehran insists the programme is peaceful and denies that it wants to acquire nuclear weapons. 
 
 Some experts familiar with Iran’s government have speculated that Rezaian and his wife were caught in the crosshairs of political infighting among the country’s fractious leadership. The country’s elected president, Hassan Rouhani, is a relative moderate, who has called for normalizing relations with western countries but faces fierce opposition from hardline government officials loyal to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who controls security issues. 
 
 Rezaian’s detention – a situation the secretary of Iran’s own human rights council has called a “fiasco” – has caused much embarrassment to the president, who has sought to cast himself as a reformer. After his election in 2013, Rouhani went to the Washington Post to publish his first and only opinion piece in the western press, calling for cooperation between Iran and the west. 
 
 The day Rezaian was arrested, Iran’s culture ministry had just renewed his press credentials. 
 
 “That shows you that one branch of government was totally fine with what Jason was doing and extended his press credentials, and another branch of government, the security forces and the intelligence forces, goes and breaks in and detains him,” said Faraz Sanei, the Iran researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. 
 
 “It’s a very complicated picture, both in terms of how agencies view press freedoms and in terms of Iranian laws.” 
 
 Iran has long been condemned for its ongoing persecution of journalists, which has been stepped up in recent months. This year, Iran’s judiciary, at odds with the reform-minded president, has overseen a series of arrests of journalists and local activists, often carried out by the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards. 
 
 Sanei said the next step could be a formal, probably closed, trial, though what happens next is up to the discretion of the Iranian government. 
 
 “We know that already there are severe due process violations so any trial that takes place, frankly, is going to be tainted,” Sanei said. 
 
 Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus are suspicious of dual citizens, and historically such citizens are treated solely as Iranians, experts say, which is why requests for consular access by the Swiss, who represent US interests in Iran, has been denied. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A huge picture of Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seen as participants attend the opening session of the World against Violence and Extremism conference, in Tehran on 9 December 2014. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA 
 
 “Any dual national Iranian is considered an Iranian in Iran, which makes it that much more difficult”, said Haleh Esfandiari, a dual Iranian-American citizen and a former Evin prison inmate. 
 
 Esfandiari, who is now the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC, spent 105 days in solitary confinement in 2007, after she was accused of conspiring to topple the regime. 
 
 Recalling her detention, she said worse than the physical pain is the psychological distress. 
 
 “There is a lot of mental pressure,” she said. “I fought very hard to not end up in a state of despair. Because that’s what they want. They want you to feel desperate, low, depressed so that then they can make you sign a confession or repeat what they want you to tell them. 
 
 Esfandiari said she hopes Rezaian knows there are people outside Evin prison working tirelessly to secure his release. 
 
 “One of the tactics of the interrogator is telling the prisoner, especially in our cases, that nobody in the outside world cares for you, while in reality the world does care for you,” she said. 
 
 Considering this, Esfandiari said she thinks increased media attention of Rezaian’s ordeal would help put pressure on Iran’s government to release him, which she believes happened in her case. 
 
 “Publicity is the last thing the Iranian government wants,” she said. 
 
 She explained: “The big difference between my case and Jason’s case is that I was in the press on a daily basis. There were things constantly being written about me … and that made it really unpleasant and uncomfortable for the Iranian authorities.” 
 
 Rezaian’s family have launched a campaign demanding that the Iranian government drop all the charges against him and release him unconditionally. 
 
 Last week, Rezaian’s mother travelled to Tehran after appealing directly to Ayatollah Khamenei for Jason’s freedom. 
 
 She arrived in Tehran on Tuesday, Ali said, but was denied access when she went to see Rezaian in prison on Wednesday morning. She has vowed to keep trying until Iranian officials let her see her son. 
 
 Ali said he and his family will continue to fight unwaveringly for Rezaian’s release. Until then, they are doing their best to keep up their spirits and not lose hope. 
 
 “We’d love for him and his wife to be able to leave the country,” Ali said. Addressing the Iranian authorities he added: ”Please, just drop the charges, we don’t even have to know what they are. Just let him leave. He could get on a plane tonight. He could be home by Christmas.”
– A Washington Post reporter who has been imprisoned in Iran since July for unspecified reasons has been indicted and will go on trial, according to Iran's state news agency. The AP reports that the announcement about Jason Rezaian came after a meeting between John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, and if nothing else the indictment finally marks progress in his case. "We hope that this issue could be resolved, but unfortunately there are judicial issues involved which the judiciary has to deal with," Zarif told reporters. The best hope now for Rezaian is that the case will be handled quickly, leading to his release. Iran has never made clear why it arrested the 38-year-old Iranian-American, who holds dual citizenship. His wife, a fellow journalist named Yeganeh Salehi, also was arrested, but she was released relatively quickly. In interviews last month with the Guardian and Washington Post, Rezaian's family said prison was taking a serious toll on his physical and mental health, in part because he's been held mostly in solitary confinement. The Post offered this: "Some experts have speculated that Rezaian has been caught up in a domestic power struggle between Iranian political factions feuding over Tehran’s recent diplomatic opening toward the West." He will go on trial in a court that handles national security offenses.