Kurdish literary activists Anisa Jafari-Mehr and Dariush Moradi have been acquitted from the accusation of “propaganda against the state” against them, sources told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).

In the morning of 13 June, Anisa Jafari-Mehr appealed to the Public and Revolutionary Court of Eslamabad-e Gharb in Kermanshah province to be informed of the outcome of her trial. The court told her that she and Dariush Moradi were acquitted of the charge of “propaganda against the state”.

The trial of the two activists was held on 18 February 2021, presided over by Judge Malayeri, on the charges of “propaganda against the state”. Before that, they had also been charged with “acting against national security” by collaborating with Kurdish opposition parties.

Their lawyer Mostafa Ahmadian had spoken to the KHRN after the court hearing. “In the court hearing, which was held at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Public and Revolutionary Court of Eslamabad-e Gharb, the clients were questioned individually. The fact that their final defence was heard only on charges of propaganda activities against the state, it can be hoped that non-prosecution would come out of the other charge, which is membership in groups that intend to take action against national security.”

Anisa Jafari-Mehr wrote on her personal Instagram account on 17 February, before appearing in the court and said: “I will go to the Eslamabad-e Gharb courthouse for my last hearing, in a way that I have not been shown any evidence about the accusations against me claiming my membership in Kurdish parties or acting against national security after I was arrested during an attack on our house on the pretext of delivery of a postal package to our house. Also, the prosecutor of the Eslamabad-e Gharb Public Prosecutor’s Office has denied my lawyer access to my case. Having a lawyer and, of course, the right of the lawyer to access the case is one of the most basic rights of any person, which is easily ignored. Self-defence, in such a system in which basic rights are not taken into account, is completely meaningless and is an administrative procedure for enforcing a sentence that is already given.”

Anisa Jafari-Mehr is a graduate of Linguistics and a member of the writers’ committee of the literary and artistic quarterly “ژ” (pronounced as ‘zh’ in Persian and Kurdish), and Dariush Moradi is a member of the editorial board of the cultural-literary website named Hesareh. They were detained on 23 November 2020 by security agents at their family homes in Eslamabad-e Gharb. Jafari-Mehr was released from the detention centre of the intelligence office in Kermanshah on 9 December on a bail of 350 million Iranian Tomans – nearly 14,000 USD – and Moradi was released on bail on 7 December.

A year earlier, in December 2019, Dariush Moradi and Anisa Jafari-Mehr, along with five other Kurdish activists, were detained by security agents during mass detention of literary and cultural activists in Eslamabad-e Gharb and Kermanshah. Although Jafari Mehr was released on bail after several hours of interrogation, the other detainees were interrogated for a week in the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Kermanshah.