The Branch One of the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office in Sahneh, western Iran, has issued a legal summons for Yarsani activist Siavash Hayati to submit his final defence at the court.
Hayati, who is the spokesperson for the Yarsan Civil Activists’ Advisory Council and the secretary of the Kurdish United Front, was charged with “assembly and collusion to commit a crime against national security”.
According to the subpoena, the Prosecutor’s Office gave the activist five days from 25 February to present his final defence.
Hayati and six other activists, Seyyed Amin Abbasi, Kaki Farzad Almasi and Seyyed Soroush Abbasi, Ali Nazari, Mohammad Ghabouli and Rouzbeh Hayati, were beaten and arrested without an arrest warrant by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on their way back from Sahneh to Kermanshah on 30 November 2022.
The activists had travelled to Sahneh to meet the people freed on the 21st anniversary of the commemoration of Seyed Khalil Alinezhad, a famous artist and one of the leaders of the Yarsan community.
Hayati was released on bail from the Dizel Abad Prison of Kermanshah after 34 days in detention.
Security forces previously arrested the activist on 23 September 2022, after the anti-government protests broke out in the village of Wargameh in Dalahu, Kermanshah province. They transferred him to the detention centre of the Ministry of Intelligence in Kermanshah.
Hayati, who went on a hunger strike to protest against his illegal detention, was released on bail from Dizel Abad Prison on 8 October 2022.
In November 2022, the Yarsan Civil Activists’ Advisory Council announced that the Branch Five of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Kermanshah based in Eslamabad-e Gharb had sentenced Hayati to one year in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state”.
