Kurdish women activists Baran Saedi and Leyla Pashaei, who were arrested after taking part in an International Women’s Day event in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, have been provisionally released on bail.
The activists were arrested by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence following the 8 March rally and taken to the ministry’s detention centre in the city, where they were held in solitary confinement for 10 days.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that they were forced to confess to organising the event and were denied access to legal representation and family visits during their detention.
Additionally, authorities restricted their access to food and water, providing it only at pre-dawn and evening meals in line with Ramadan fasting hours.
Saedi, who suffers from chronic health conditions, was also deprived of her medication in the early days of her detention, KHRN has learned.
After 10 days, both women were moved to the quarantine ward of Sanandaj’s Juvenile Detention Centre before being released on 25 March on bail of five billion rials (nearly 5,000 USD) each.
They face charges of “assembly and collusion with intent to disrupt national security”.
Earlier, two other Kurdish women activists, Soheyla Motaei and Soma Mohammad-Rezaei, who were arrested around the same time, were released on bail in mid-March.
Mohammad-Rezaei and Saedi were arrested on 9 March in Sanandaj, while Pashaei and Motaei were arrested the following day in Sanandaj and Dehgolan.
Saedi, Pashaei and Motaei were previously arrested during the anti-government Women, Life, Freedom uprising in 2022.
