The clerical regime continues to arrest and imprison freedom-loving rights activists, sentencing them to unjust prison sentences and heavy fines to fill the regime’s pockets. In the past few days, the regime’s courts sentenced Nirvana Torbati-Nejad, 16, Fereshteh Mahdavi, Mahnaz Tarrah, and Mahboubeh Bigdeli.
In the meantime, hunger striker Narges Mansouri is in dire health in the women’s ward of Evin Prison.
Nirvana Torbati-Nejad
The 16-year-old teenager, Nirvana Torbati-Nejad was sentenced and fined.
On Saturday, January 7, Branch 105 of the Criminal Court No. 2 of Gorgan sentenced Nirvana Torbati-Nejad to ten months of imprisonment on charges of membership in a groups opposing the regime aiming to disrupt the country’s security. She was also fined two million Tomans on charges of “assembly and collusion to commit crime against internal security.”
Her trial was held on December 27, 2023.
Security forces abducted her at her workplace on September 10, 2023, before the anniversary of the Iran uprising 2022.
Fereshteh Mahdavi
Branch 105 of the Criminal Court No. 2, also sentenced Fereshteh Mahdavi to ten months in prison and 50 lashes of the whip. Her prison sentence has been suspended for three years, and her flogging sentence has been changed to a fine of 10 million tomans.
According to reports on September 23, the authorities of the Prison of Gorgan (northern Iran) called Ms. Fereshteh Mahdavi to take clothes for her imprisoned son, Mohammad Reza Showqi, 23 years old. When Ms. Mahdavi went to deliver some clothes for her son, the State Security forces arrested her and put her in jail.
She was temporarily released on bail in mid-October.
She has been sentenced to 10 months in prison and 50 lashes for “disrupting public calm.”
Narges Mansouri
Narges Mansouri is presently in dire health, suffering from blood pressure and sugar, and losing a lot of weight. She started a hunger strike on December 25, 2023. In protest of pressures imposed on her family, she has refrained from taking food and medicine.
She held a sit-in outside the sentry’s office in the women’s ward of Evin on Saturday, December 30. The authorities have not shown any reactions.
She is protesting the verdict issued to confiscate her mother’s only house, which had been set as Ms. Mansouri’s bail.
Narges Mansouri, 46, and the mother of a 12-year-old, is a member of the Syndicate of the workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company. Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced her to five years in prison on the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security” and to one year in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state” in November 2019.
Ms. Mansouri was initially arrested in mid-April 2022 to serve her time in prison but was released on a 3-billion-Toman bail in May. Finally, she was arrested on December 1, 2023, in Khoy and transferred to Evin Prison.
Mahnaz Tarrah
Mahnaz Tarrah was sentenced to a total of 4 years and 4 months in prison.
She has been arrested at least three times over the past year by the intelligence services.
Mahnaz Tarrah lives in Tehran.
The 26th Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced her to 3 years and 8 months in prison on the charge of “assembly and collusion,” and to 8 months imprisonment for “propaganda against the state.”
Mahnaz Tarrah was violently arrested on November 13, 2023, in one of Tehran streets.
Mahboubeh Bigdeli
Mahboubeh Bigdeli, a rights activist from Gachsaran and mother of two children, has been sentenced to five months in prison for disseminating propaganda against the state.
Gachsaran is in the Boyerahmad and Kohgiluyeh Province, in southwestern Iran.
She had been summoned to the 3rd Branch of the Prosecutor’s Office. But she was arrested upon reporting in, and temporarily released on bail two days later.
Ms. Bigdeli was arrested on November 2, 2022, during Iran protests and imprisoned in the Prison of Yasuj. She was released in February 2023.