Posted 2009/2/3
Iran: UPDATE - Targeting women’s rights activists - Alieh Eghdam Doust and Nafiseh Azad taken into custody
Front Line is concerned at recent reports that women's rights defender Alieh Eghdam Doust has been taken into custody to serve her sentence which was reduced on appeal, while Nafiseh Azad has also been taken into custody while her objection to the temporary arrest warrant against her is investigated. This has been followed by a violent raid on the home of Nafiseh Azad.
Statement by the Campaign for Equality
February 3, 2009: Security Officials from the Special Security Branch of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Courts stormed the home of imprisoned Campaign for Equality member and women’s rights activist, Nafiseh Azad and seized her personal property as well as the property of her housemates. During this search and seizure operation officials violently beat Elnaz Ansari, another member of the Campaign and Nafiseh’s housemate and beat and handcuffed Vahid Maleki (Nafiseh’s husband).
Link here for latest information on the arrests of members of the Campaign for Equality
Alieh Eghdamdoust who had been sentenced to three years of mandatory prison as a result of her participation in the June 12, 2006 protest in Hafte Tir Square has been transferred under guard to the Office of Implementation of Sentences at the Revolutionary Courts. Alieh Eghdam Doust, a women’s rights defender, was arrested during the protest objecting to discriminatory laws against women in Hafte Tir Square in June 12 2006, and spent a week in prison. She was sentenced by the 15th security branch of the Revolutionary Courts to three years and four months mandatory prison sentence and 20 lashes.
The appeals courts upheld three years of the mandatory prison sentence, reducing her original sentence by four months and 20 lashes. Further Information on the Case of Alieh Eghdam Doust
On January 31, 2009 officials announced that they would take Nafiseh Azad to the Revolutionary Courts to follow-up her objection to the temporary arrest order issued in her case. Her husband Vahid Maleki was informed by officials at the Security Police Station in Darband that the investigations regarding the case of Azad are ongoing and that she must remain in prison.
Nafiseh Azad, a women’s rights activist and member of the campaign, was arrested in the mountains in the north of Tehran on Friday January 30, 2009 along with two others while collecting signatures in support of the Campaign’s petition.
