The Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been holding environmental activists Mohsen Dadgar, Saeid Dadgar, and Yasser Saberi in detention for over two weeks without access to legal representation or visits from their families.
The activists were arrested by IRGC forces on 20 June while attempting to extinguish forest fires caused by IRGC shelling of Mount Kusalan.
After their arrest, the individuals were taken to the IRGC base in the village of Zherizhah in Sarvabad, Kurdistan province, and after several hours of interrogation, they were transferred to the Shahramfar detention centre of the IRGC intelligence service in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that the activists have only been able to contact their families by phone once since their arrest and that no updates have been provided by the authorities in the past 20 days, despite their families’ efforts to obtain information about their situation.
The IRGC forces stopped the activists’ vehicle and detained them without a judicial order, announcing that travel to the Kusalan mountain area was prohibited.
On 12 June, the IRGC began heavily shelling the Kusalan mountain area in Sarvabad under the pretext of conducting the “Moharram military exercise”, leading to extensive wildfires in the surrounding forests.
Following the shelling of Mount Kusalan, IRGC forces also bombed some forested heights in the villages near Marivan, Kurdistan province, causing extensive wildfires in the forests around the villages of Bilu, Darreh Tefi, Chor and Bardeh Rasheh.
