Iran: Continuing to Pressure Dissent University Students

International Liberty Association: Iranian security forces on Monday, 23 November, arrested Elham Samimi, a student at Tehran University.
The security forces had previously inspected her home on 16 October and confiscated her personal belonging and those of her guests and relatives.
Elham Samimi is a student of anthropology at Tehran University.

The Iranian Students Trade Union Council reported that the state security forces raided her home at midnight, confiscating her personal belongings, and those of her guests and relatives, including laptops, books, and cell phones, and threatened her with a judicial and security response.

According to the report, after that night, security forces summoned her to a “secret and informal house” for interrogation. The state forces threatened Ms. Samimi and her family and interrogated her on several occasions.

The Iranian Students Trade Union Council mentioned that after Ms. Samimi refused to return to that location to be interrogated again, the security forces contacted her and threatened her family, and pressured her into going to Evin Prison where she was arrested upon arrival.

In yet another case Tehran University student activist Mohammad Shabahati was sentenced to 5 years in prison in absentia. He had not received any notices or summons and was not aware of the illegal proceedings against him.

Around the same time, the state security forces on 15 November raided the homes of Mojtaba Dadashi and his brother Morteza.

The state forces confiscated the student’s belongings including their cellophanes, laptops and books. Morteza Dadashi is a graduate student of Applied Chemistry at Amirkabir University of Technology and Mojtaba Dadashi is a graduate student in International Relations at Allameh Tabatabai University.

The Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced student activist Soha Mortezaei to six years in prison. She is charged with “association and collusion against national security.”

Iranian authorities arrested Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi, both award-winning students at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, on April 10 and have kept them in custody since without any announced charges. The students are under intense pressure to provide forced “confessions.”

Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi were originally arrested for allegedly tearing up a poster of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but a case has been built around them by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry that is unfounded and based on false evidence.

ILA: Younesi has won gold medals in Iran’s National Astronomy Olympiad and the 2018 International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in China.
Moradi won a silver medal in Iran’s domestic astronomy Olympiad in 2016.

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