This archive report was first published on 25 November 2019.
On November 25, 2019, a US district court judge ordered Iran to pay $180 million (Sh18.4 billion) in damages to Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter, for jailing him on espionage charges.
Rezaian spent 544 days in an Iranian prison before he was released in January 2016 in exchange for seven Iranians held in the United States.
The Iranian foreign ministry's spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, described the journalist's decision to seek damages as "strange".
"Mr Jason Rezaian... was a security convict and the Islamic Republic of Iran commuted his (sentence of maximum punishment) to imprisonment," said Mousavi.
"He was pardoned and despite having an open case... he was released," Mousavi told a news conference in Tehran.
"For him to go there and lodge a complaint and for American courts to lavishly determine such figures" was a course of action that Iran "rejects", said Mousavi.
