Authorities of Orumiyeh Central Prison ordered the transfer of Azerbaijani-Turkic civil rights activist Mehdi Saaneh-Farshi to solitary confinement on the evening of 22 September, after he went on a hunger strike.
The activist, who comes from Tabriz in East Azerbaijan province, went on a hunger strike earlier in the day.
He demands the review of his five-and-a-half-year prison sentence given by the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh.
On 18 August 2020, security forces arrested the civil rights activist after his entry from Turkey to Iran.
After the Ministry of Intelligence interrogated him for 26 days, he was transferred to Orumiyeh Central Prison.
In October 2020, Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Orumiyeh sentenced Saaneh-Farshi to five and a half years in prison on charges of “membership in opposition groups abroad” and “propaganda against the state”.
The Court of Appeals of Orumiyeh and the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the sentence in the past months.
