Some seven detained teachers’ union activists named Shaban Mohammadi, Masoud Nikkhah, Eskandar Lotfi, Omid Shah-Mohammadi, Parviz Ahsani, Kaveh Mohammadzadeh, and Hiva Ghoreishi are still held in custody in Tehran’s Evin Prison and the detention centre of the Ministry of Intelligence in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province.
Security forces had previously arrested the activists in the cities of Marivan and Divandarreh in Kurdistan province.
On 5 July, Lotfi, the spokesman for the Coordinating Council of Iranian Cultural Associations and a member of the Board of Directors of the Teachers’ Union of Kurdistan-Marivan, had a short phone call with his family and informed them about his transfer from Ward 2A to the quarantine ward of Evin Prison.
On 30 May, Lotfi went on a hunger strike for several days in protest against his continued detention and the pressure of security interrogators for his forced confessions.
Mohammadi and Nikkhah, two other activists of the Kurdistan-Marivan Teachers’ Union, are still in one of the security cells of Evin prison.
These three trade union activists were interrogated by security interrogators regarding their relationship with two French citizens arrested in Iran and were threatened and pressured to make forced confessions.
The Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested Mohammadi, Lotfi, and Nikkhah were arrested on 1 May Marivan.
Mohammadi was released after several hours of interrogation, but Lotfi and Nikkhah were transferred to the detention centre of this security-military institution in Sanandaj for interrogation.
Nikkhah was released from Marivan prison on 11 May but was arrested again by security forces the next day.
Shah-Mohammadi, Ahsani, Mohammadzadeh, and Ghoreishi, members of the Kurdistan Teachers’ Trade Union in Divandarreh, are still in the detention centre of the intelligence ministry in Sanandaj, denied the right to have lawyers and receive family visits.
They were arrested on 15 June during a protest rally of teachers in front of the Ministry of Education in Sanandaj.
