No Progress In Legal Action As Iranian Journalist’s Detention Persists

Describing the present time as "one of the most suffocating eras for universities in Iranian history," a group of students from Tarbiat Modarres University, a graduate school based in Tehran, emphasized that despite their university being traditionally associated with the education of higher officials and managers of the Islamic regime, its students actively participated in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

As a result of their involvement, the students stated that intelligence and security forces have intensified efforts to intimidate and eliminate nonconformist students and professors at their university.

Student Day, which usually falls on December 7, marks the anniversary of a student protest in 1953 against the visit of then-US Vice President Richard Nixon during which three Tehran University students were killed by the police.

Hundreds of university students were arrested across Iran during the protests that followed the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the custody of morality police in late September last year. For months students in various universities held protest rallies inside universities and in some instances, they were supported by their professors and other faculty members.

In the past year, intelligence and security forces have made every effort to bring students and universities, some of which were scenes of extensive protests for months during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, under control. Students and professors are still called in by intelligence organs and interrogated and often forced to pledge that they will not participate in any protests.

Student sources say authorities have banned hundreds of students in different universities from studying this academic year for taking part in protests and expelled tens of professors for opposing the crackdown on students during anti-government protests.

The crackdown on universities after the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the recent purge of academia seems even harsher than the Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s, Mahdieh Golrou, a former student activist told Iran International TV.

In 1980, soon after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the new government’s Cultural Revolutionary Headquarters shut down universities for three years to purge the academia of what it saw as secular professors, who could potentially challenge the clerical ideology. The new regime wanted to enforce its own Islamic revolutionary ideology (Islamification) in higher education establishments. During this period, thousands of professors and students were purged for various reasons, including political inclinations and western influences.

Students of Tarbiat Modarres University said in their statement that they would not leave and surrender their university to totalitarians. “We will fight for the smallest of opportunities to breath and to resist and use them against Islamic totalitarians to reach a humane, free and equal society,” they added.

Student groups in other universities have issued similar statements.

Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, usually meets with students on Student Day and delivers a speech but this year no meeting or speech was reported.

Some other officials -- including President Ebrahim Raisi, Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei -- visited universities and met with pro-government students, not on Student Day but up to three days earlier in ceremonies that appeared to be very low-key in comparison with previous years.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was apprehended by Iran's morality or hijab police on the street in mid-September 2022. Within hours, she was transported to the hospital with critical head injuries, ultimately succumbing to the trauma three days later. The incident swiftly ignited widespread protests across the nation.

Mahsa Amini's father, mother, and brother were informed at Imam Khomeini Airport that they were prohibited from leaving the country, and their passports were confiscated.

The European Union had announced on October 19 that Mahsa Amini, along with the Women, Life, Freedom movement, would be honored with the prestigious Sakharov Prize.

The Amini family has been under intense pressures from security forces since Mahsa's death. similar to intimidation and gag orders enforced by Iranian intelligence against other families whose young members were killed by the government.

On the anniversary of Amini's killing, her father was temporarily detained on September 16 by security forces for intimidation purposes. Following threats and warnings, he was eventually released. Reports from social media and local Kurdish sources suggested that Amjad Amini, Mahsa's father, faced restrictions on leaving his house for a certain period.

Amjad Amini and his wife, Mojgan Eftekhari, had earlier called for a gathering to commemorate the anniversary of Mahsa’s death at her gravesite in a cemetery in Saqqez, west of Iran.

Iran International received information that Amjad Amini was summoned multiple times by the Saqqez Intelligence Office after announcing the ceremony marking his daughter's death, undergoing hours of interrogation.

With no routine consular visits or phone calls during his 600 days of detention in Tehran's Evin prison, Johan has resorted to hunger strikes at least five times, as revealed by his father, Matts Floderus.

Matts detailed the dire circumstances Johan is enduring in an interview with The Guardian. According to him, Johan is confined to a cell without a bed and compelled to sleep under constant lighting. Routine access to phone calls, books, and essential food supplements has been consistently denied.

Expressing the family's distress, Matts shared his wife's hope for Johan's release in time for Christmas, highlighting the devastating impact of the situation on their lives. He emphasized Johan's arbitrary detention, stating that he has committed no wrongdoing and should be released to leave the country.

He said the Iranians had “taken Johan for no reason” and “should ensure he has full human rights while there and they should release him and let him leave the country right away”.

Iran routinely arrests foreigners and dual citizens to use them as bargaining chips against Western countries. The United States released $6 billion of Iran's blocked funds this year to free five hostages.

Johan, an alumnus of Oxford, previously worked on the Afghanistan desk of the EU’s external services department. He was detained on April 17, 2022, in what seems to be a deliberate strategy by Iranian authorities, possibly aimed at leveraging his release against Iranian prisoners in the West or extracting financial concessions.

Johan's family awaits an imminent court hearing in December to learn of the charges against him.

The Canada-based non-profit has urged the international community to investigate this type of torture and deaths resulting from it in Iran. “The Islamic regime in Iran must be held accountable for its crimes against political prisoners,” a recent report by CFPPI, said.

Pharmacological torture is the use of psychoactive, psychotropic drugs or other types of drugs to punish, extract information, or to subdue prisoners into compliance by causing distress in the form of pain, anxiety, panic, psychological disturbances, immobilization, hallucination, paranoia, disorientation, and addiction without leaving obvious physical signs of violence.

CFPPI has said in its report that it conducted extensive investigations that indicated an alarming increase in the use of pharmacological torture in Iran in the past five year and particularly since Women, Life, Freedom protests that began in late September 2022. Their findings draw on testimonies of those arrested during the protests of 2022-2023 as well as on the accounts of former political prisoners.

According to CFPPI's report, the regime has intentionally and systematically subjected more political prisoners to pharmacological torture by sending detainees to mental hospitals and forcibly administering anti-psychotic drugs at multiple prisons across the country, as well as by mixing drugs into their food and drinks.

“Whereas formerly, prison guards would offer sedatives to prisoners, which many of the younger and newer prisoners voluntarily accepted to ease their experience, new reports suggest that since September 2022 the practice has changed to violent and coercive administering of unwanted drugs,” the report said.

One of the victims interviewed for the report, a 27-year-old woman who said she had been raped several times during her detention, told CFPPI that she was forced into taking unidentified pills which had a profound impact on her, leading to psychotic episodes. After her release from prison, she attempted to take her own life and lost one of her kidneys.

Prisoners say they have also noted serious pains and aches in the absence of the drugs.

Dissident rapper Saman Seydi (Yasin) is among political prisoners who have spoken up about their tortures including administration of unidentified pills and injections at a very high cost. He has been sentenced to death and is still in prison.

Yasin was held at a mental hospital on the orders of the notorious judge Abolghasem Salavati for four days as punishment for smuggling out an audio file from Tehran’s Evin Prison in which he described tortures including being subjected to mock execution.

At the mental hospital where he was tied to the bed, security forces beat him for refusing to allow them to inject him with an unknown substance. Yasin claims he fell unconscious for 24 hours after the injection and has been having problems with his eyesight and balance since then.

Yasin’s torturers, he says, wanted to force him to “confess” to possession and use of a firearm during last year’s protests.

In several other cases in the past year, detainees including young protesters have died soon after their release from prison under suspicious circumstances.

Pressure on victims’ families to accept “suicide”, “sudden death”, or “overdose” as cause of death of individuals with no prior record of major health problems, depression or addiction has raised suspicions that the deaths may have resulted from pharmacological torture.

“Pharmacological torture is extremely distressing and punitive as it causes severe physical pain, harmful and painful physiological changes, confusion, perceptual abnormalities, fearfulness and anxiety, lethargy, and loss of personal agency,” William Hopkins, Consultant Psychiatrist at Freedom from Torture who has worked to rehabilitate survivors of pharmacological torture from various countries is quoted by the report as saying.

One adherent of the religion, Nahaleh Shahidi, is still in jail after being apprehended in April by security forces at the Kerman railway station and subsequently transferred to Kerman prison.

He is reportedly facing charges of "propaganda against the system" and "formation of groups with the intention of disrupting national security."

He was informed of the accusations months ago, but no formal indictment has been issued. A source close to Shahidi’s family says the prosecutor's representative has allegedly halted the progression of the case on a number of pretexts.

The source said that Shahidi's detention is routinely extended each month, without any indication of a trial or release with bail in sight.

On Thursday, legal proceedings were initiated against five Baha'i residents from Ghaemshahr in northern Iran. The defendants learned about the prosecution through text messages on their phones.

A source close to the families of the residents expressed concern, saying, "It seems that security forces are attempting to fabricate cases against the individuals, as there is still no news about the charges and reasons for filing a case against them."

Informal sources estimate that over 300,000 Baha'i citizens reside in Iran. However, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic officially recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Baha'is constitute the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran and have been systematically targeted for persecution since the 1979 revolution, facing arbitrary detentions, discrimination, and restrictions on religious practices.