TEHERAN - A female Iranian student living in the United States has been arrested during a visit to Tehran for research and to see family, a women's rights campaigner in the Islamic Republic said on Monday.
Esha Momeni was working on a film about the women's movement in Iran as part of her studies in California and was detained in the capital on Wednesday, activist Parvin Ardalan told Reuters.
"She is living in the United States and she has interviewed members of the campaign in Tehran," Ardalan said, referring to a drive launched two years ago to collect one million signatures in favour of greater women's rights in Iran.
"She came for her research, to make (a) film about the women movement," said Ardalan, who is a member of the campaign.
Campaigners say dozens of them have been detained since they began the campaign in 2006 in support of demands to end what they see as legal discrimination of women in Iran.
Western diplomats see the detentions of women's rights activists as part of a wider clampdown on dissent by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government as it faces Western pressure over its disputed nuclear programme.
Most of the women detained were freed within a few days or weeks. Iran rejects charges of abuse.
The campaign's website www.forequality.info said Momeni was taken to the capital's Evin jail after her detention.
Momeni is a graduate student of the School of Communications, Media and Arts at California State University and came to Iran two months ago to visit her family and to work on a master's degree about the women's movement in Iran, it said.
"Security officials searched her home and seized property, including her computer and films which were part of her thesis project," a statement on the website said.
There was no immediate comment from government officials.
The activists say they face institutionalised discrimination that makes them second-class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody and other aspects of life.
Iran's ruling clerics say women in the country are protected from the sex symbol status they have in the West.
Iran last year detained four Iranians with dual U.S. citizenship on security-related charges, drawing strong protests from Washington. They were later freed on bail.