AN OXFORD woman fears her student husband may be facing torture in an Iranian prison cell after vanishing six days ago.

Fatameh Shams, 26, said her partner Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, 27, was detained as the couple tried to leave Tehran. She did fly out.

Last night – after almost a week of hearing nothing – she said: “All I want to know is that he is safe.”

The country has been plunged into turmoil following the re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – with many of his opponents claiming a rigged ballot.

Both Ms Shams and Mr Jalaeipour are students at St Antony’s College, in Woodstock Road, and supporters of presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Security forces detained Mr Jalaeipour at Tehran airport on June 17. Despite family efforts to trace him, including calls to prisons, they don’t know where he is.

Ms Shams, who lives in Apsley Road, said she just wanted to know that her husband was still alive.

She said: “My husband went to the airport departure gate and was stopped by the security forces. They did not have any papers from the court or anything saying why he was being detained.

“They told him to turn off his mobile phone and come with them. It has been six days and I’ve heard nothing.

“As we went through control, he told me to go through separately because, if they saw us speaking, they would probably arrest me too.

“In the last seconds he was trying to tell me something, but never got the chance.”

Mr Jalaeipour, a third-year sociology student, had been travelling between Oxford and Iran and balancing campaigning with his studies.

Ms Shams said that most of the couple’s friends working as activists in Iran had also been arrested.

She is now too scared to go back to the country for fear of suffering a similar fate.

She added: “Iranian law states that every prisoner has the right to a phone call, but we have heard nothing.

“Internet sites for re-formists are being shut down, mobile phones are having problems – it is hard to know what’s going on.

“My husband’s brother went to the central prison with personal items for him, but again, learnt nothing.

“Mohammadreza is religious and believed in peaceful protest. The only news coming out of the prison is that people are being tortured for information.”

A spokesman for St An-tony’s College said: “We are naturally deeply concerned about the detention of our student and have written to the authorities in Iran.

“We have pointed out that he is a credit to the education system in Iran.

“St Antony’s has urged that his case be investigated and that the authorities show the wisdom and compassion which must be part of all legal systems, and release him to continue his studies.”

awilliams@oxfordmail.co.uk