Mohsen Sharifi and Habib Ansari, both in their fifth semester majoring in electronics, vanished after being summoned by university staff and questioned for three hours.
Friends and classmates told how prior to the protest at the university, the two students were continuously threatened over the phone.
There is currently no information on their whereabouts, and their families have staged a protest outside the city governor’s office to demand information on where they are being held.
Students at various universities in Tehran and other cities staged protests on the December 7 Students’ Day, with many chanting slogans including ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Political prisoners must be freed’.
Hassan Rouhani’s regime launched a major clampdown on students ahead of December 7 in fear of a repeat of the 2009 uprisings.
In 1999, it was Rouhani himself who led the crackdown on the university students uprising, announcing on July 14 of that year at a pro-regime rally: “At dusk yesterday we received a decisive revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any protests by these opportunist elements wherever they may occur. From today, our people shall witness how in the arena law enforcement, we shall deal with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their faces.”
The ‘opportunists and riotous elements’ to whom Rouhani was referring were university students who wanted freedom and democracy.
A report on that year’s event in the Wall Street Journal on June 17, 2013, said: “More than a dozen students were killed in those protests, more than 1,000 were arrested, hundreds were tortured, and 70 simply disappeared.”