Pall at Their Party

[August 6th, 2008]

Music, dancing and traditional Persian meat kebabs were all present Saturday at the ninth annual Iranian Festival in downtown Portland.

So were concern, fear and anxiety among the 500-plus festival-goers attending the first large gathering of local Iranians in the wake of federal agents raiding Portland’s largest Iranian charity last month.

The FBI’s Portland office had planned to recruit Farsi speakers at the day-long outdoor celebration at Portland State University. But festival organizer Reza Namvar said the FBI withdrew its application for a booth after its July 15 raid on the Portland-based Child Foundation set the Iranian community on edge (see “Mystery Raid,” WW, July 23, 2008).

“I’m glad they did that. We were debating how to say no,” said Namvar, manning a book-selling booth at the festival. “Do you really want an agency recruiting in your community when all they do is raid places like Child Foundation?”

The charity, founded and staffed by Iranian-Americans, says it’s helped connect sponsors with more than 3,500 poor children in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia and the United States. Its work is well known to Portland’s 10,000-strong Iranian community.

But the nonprofit’s work has been on hold since the U.S. Attorney’s office, with the help of the FBI, confiscated its computers, cell phones and fax machines in a morning raid at the foundation’s downtown Portland offices. The last of the equipment wasn’t returned until Monday, Aug. 4.

The feds have given no explanation. And U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who tries to attend the Iranian Festival each year, said Saturday he wasn’t aware of the raid.

With their equipment back, officials at the charity hope to return to normal. But some observers doubted if Child Foundation would ever bring in as much as the $1.6 million it raised last fiscal year.

“Because they are under this umbrella of suspicion now, it’s going to be very difficult for them,” said Gabi Ross, a volunteer at the festival’s Iranian-American Friendship Council booth.

At the Child Foundation booth, Mehrdad Yasrebi, the Clackamas research scientist who founded the charity in 1994, acknowledged it may be difficult to regain donors’ trust, despite no allegations of wrongdoing from the feds.

“That’s a major concern when something like this happens,” Yasrebi says. “Even if the investigation proves us innocent, the mark is still there.”