A speech therapist named Soran (Pouya) Rashidi and a civil rights activist by the name of Saman Ghazali who were arrested by the security forces in Qazvin and Mahabad in the past few weeks have gone on a hunger strike to protest against their continued illegal detentions.
On the evening of 23 September, security forces raided Rashidi’s in Qazvin and arrested him.
His two-month-pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage due to the shock caused by the arrest.
Rashidi is one of the five speech therapist specialists in Iran. Some of the families of the patients under his supervision also went to the court and Choubin-Dar Prison in Qazvin, demanding his release.
The investigator of the case prevented his release on various pretexts.
In a brief phone call with his family from Choubin-Dar Prison on 13 October, Rashidi said that he would go on a dry hunger strike. There is no information about his situation since the phone call.
Also, there is no information about the fate of Ghazali, a Kurdish civil rights activist and former political prisoner, who was arrested on 25 September after being summoned by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province.
Ghazali told his family in a short phone call from Mahabad Prison on 2 October that he had gone on a hunger strike to protest against his continued detention.
He was transferred to the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan province, after he went on a hunger strike.
Also, on 17 October, the Mahabad court told Ghazali’s family that the activist’s detention order has been extended.
