Three women’s rights activists Yasaman Aryani, Monireh Arabshahi and Mojgan Keshavarz were sentenced to more than 31 years in prison.
Yasaman Aryani and Monireh Arabshahi both were sentenced to 9 years and 7 months and Mojgan Keshvarz was sentenced to 12 years and 7 months imprisonment.
Attorneys were not allowed to enter the court in the first instance and at the appeal. The court also refused to receive a defense bill from the three women’s rights activists. Earlier, in August, the initial sentences of these three women’s rights activists totaled 55 years, which triggered widespread international condemnation.
In another news, civil rights activist Narges Mansouri, a member of the Workers Syndicate of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, was sentenced to 6 years in prison and two years’ ban on membership in political parties at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court by presided by Judge Iman Afshari.
Narges Mansouri’s salary has been cut off despite more than 25 years of work experience at Tehran’s Bus Company.
Narges Mansouri was arrested on August 11, 2019 and went under interrogation at the IRGC Detention Center.
On the fifth day of her arrest, she went on a hunger strike to protest to the interrogators’ insulting and pressuring her under interrogation, and not allowing her to call her 12-year-old daughter.
She was on a hunger strike from August 16 to September 22, 2019 and ended her strike after being transferred to the women’s ward of Evin Prison.
Narges Mansouri was released from Evin Prison on November 13, on a 500 million toman bail.
A doctor arrested for her religious beliefs
A pharmacist was arrested at her home in the village of Khotbeh Sara in Gilan Province on January 25, 2020.
Firouzeh Shafizadeh, with a Ph.D. in Pharmacology, had many opportunities to work in foreign countries, but moved from Karaj to this village two months ago (November 2019) to work in the countryside and help disadvantaged people.
She was arrested only because of her religious beliefs, and security agents arrested her on charges of “propaganda against the state.”
She has been in jail for more than ten days but has not been allowed to visit her lawyer. The prosecutor has refused to grant her temporary release on bail.
