Siavash Hayati, spokesman of the Yarsan Civil Activists Advisory Council and secretary of the Kurdish United Front, was arrested on 13 May and transferred to Kermanshah Central Prison (also known as Dizel Abad Prison) to serve a one-year prison sentence.
Hayati was previously arrested by security forces on 23 September 2022, following anti-government protests in the village of Wargameh in Dalahu, Kermanshah Province. He was transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in Kermanshah.
The Yarsani activist, 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 the activist to one year in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state”.
Later, on 30 November 2022, 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.
The activists had travelled to Sahneh to meet the people released on the 21st anniversary of the death of Seyed Khalil Alinezhad, a famous artist and one of the leaders of the Yarsan community.
Hayati was released on bail after 34 days in Dizel Abad prison.
In February, Branch One of the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office in Sahneh, Kermanshah province, filed another case against the activist on charges of “assembly and collusion to commit a crime against national security”, for which he was summoned to court.