Political Prisoners Tortured, Attacked and Sentenced in Iran; Urgent Call for Action

Criminal Verdicts of “Rebellion” for 5 Political Prisoners After Months of Interrogation and Torture in Evin Prison

Brutal Attack on Khorramabad Prisoners, Transfer to Solitary Confinement, and Sentencing of a Martyr’s Father to 6 Years in Prison

Urgent Call for Immediate Action to Save the Lives of Political Prisoners

On Tuesday, May 14, the regime’s judiciary charged five political prisoners—Abolhassan Montazer, Pouya Ghobadi, Mohammad Taghavi, Vahid Bani-Amirian, and Babak Alipour—with “rebellion” and membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) after months of interrogation and torture in Ward 209 of Evin Prison. This fabricated charge carries severe penalties, including execution or heavy imprisonment.

Abolhassan Montazer, 65, had previously been arrested and imprisoned in the 1980s and again in 2018 and 2020. He was last arrested in January 2024 and suffers from heart, lung, and kidney diseases, as well as arthritis.

Pouya Ghobadi, 32, an electrical engineer, was arrested in March 2024 at the Chaldoran border and transferred to Evin. He had been arrested twice before.

Mohammad Taghavi, arrested in March 2024, had previously served three years in prison for association with the PMOI.

Vahid Bani-Amirian, 32, who holds a master’s degree in management, was arrested in January 2024. He has been imprisoned for a total of four years since 2017.

Babak Alipour, 33, a law graduate, was arrested in January 2024. He was previously arrested in November 2018 in Rasht and served four years in prison.

In another development on May 20, Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court of Karaj sentenced Mashallah Karami, the father of 2022 uprising martyr Mohammad Mehdi Karami, to five years in prison for “assembly and collusion with the intent to commit a crime against national security” and one year for “propaganda against the regime.” Mashallah Karami was arrested on August 22, 2023, during a raid by security forces. The same court also sentenced the family lawyer of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, who was arrested last August, to six years in prison for another inhumane act.

In a further criminal act, Khamenei’s henchmen at Khorramabad Central Prison violently transferred several prisoners protesting the water cut-off to solitary confinement on the orders of the prison warden and the head of prison security. During this assault, the arms and legs of several protesting prisoners were broken. Additionally, two prisoner brothers and supporters of the PMOI, Mohammad, and Mehdi Khodakarami, were exiled from solitary confinement in Khorramabad Central Prison to Parsilon Prison in the same city.

The Iranian Resistance urgently calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, and other relevant United Nations bodies, as well as the European Union and its member states, to take immediate action to save the lives of the five prisoners accused of rebellion and to secure the release of all political prisoners. It also emphasizes the necessity of an international fact-finding mission to visit Iranian prisons and meet with the prisoners.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

27 May 2024