Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

Mr. Mirakbar Hosseini, son of Mirqader, was born in 2002. He is from Marand, and he is one of the operators of “madarane dadkhahe” page on Instagram. (This page is about mothers whose children have been killed by the Iranian government during different demonstrations.)   Mr. Hosseini was first arrested on January 1, 2021, while he was serving his military service in “Ajab Shir” garrison in Maragheh. He was arrested for talking about families who were seeking justice for their slain relatives during the nation-wide demonstrations of October 2019, and for showing their pictures (protests against the government that started on November 15, 2019, in reaction to the 200% gasoline price inflation). Army Intelligence Protection Officers assaulted him and took him away. At first, they took Mr. Hosseini to a safe house in Tabriz, where they tortured him and interrogated him. He was then transferred to a solitary cell in the military section of Tabriz Prison. Mr. Hosseini said the recorded his voice so that they could build a case against him and claim that he was getting directions from dissident groups in the government.

He stayed in solitary for three months and was constantly interrogated. Then he spent about 20 days in the general section. It was explained to Mr. Hosseini that he was being charged with “spying”, “membership in national dissident groups”, and “propaganda against the government”. Eventually, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, where 9 months of it was applicable. He was sentenced in the Military Court of Eastern Azerbaijan Province, Section 1, for “membership in national dissident groups”, “attempting to write slogans on walls and to film these”, and “tearing up Sardar Soleimani’s picture”. Mr. Hosseini was acquitted of the charge of “spying” due to insufficient evidence.

In March 2021, after serving one third of his prison sentence, Mr. Hosseini was released on probation. In August of that year, they arrested him in the gold merchants’ bazaar in Marand. Eight officers surrounded him, told Mr. Hosseini he looked suspicious to them, and that he should surrender his cell phone to them. Mr. Hosseini resisted, and for this reason they beat him up and arrested him. He says when he was transferred to Marand detention center, they tied up his hands and feet, and for 20 days they severely beat him. Mr. Hosseini complained about the Security Police, but the Marand Revolutionary Public Prosecutor replied, “Well, that is the place for these things. Even if they had killed you it would have been religiously praiseworthy.”

Mr. Hosseini was given three months in prison for desertion, and he was released from Tabriz Prison in April 2022. (According to Islamic Republic laws, all men over the age of 18 are obliged to serve two years military service. Some men are exempted for various reasons. All men subject to this law must serve the full length of their obligatory military service.)  After he was released from prison he went back to serve his military service. At the entrance to the garrison, the Intelligence Protection officers asked him to stand in front of a camera and confess that he was sorry and that he had been deceived. They said the only way he could complete his military service would be to confess on film. Mr. Hosseini did not accept. He left the garrison and never went back, and for that he was labelled a “deserter”.

Mr. Hosseini continued to cover the news about dissenters on his Instagram page “madarane dadkhahe”. On December 27, 2022, at the ceremonies memorializing the fortieth day after the passing of one of the participants in the August 2022 demonstrations (1), Mr. Hosseini was arrested in Tabriz. They transferred him to the Revolutionary Guard detention center, where they tortured him with electric shock. When the officers realized he was a deserter, they transferred him to the Intelligence Protection detention center. Mr. Hosseini remained under interrogation at this detention center for a week. At the end of this period, it was explained to him that he was being charged with “propaganda against the government” and he was released temporarily on 200 million tumans bail.

After he was released, the Information officers would constantly contact him and threaten him to death. These repeated contacts interfered with his life to the point that he told one of them if they continued to harass him he would kill himself. Intelligence officers told Mr. Hosseini on the phone, “We will kill you with a cyanide pill and we will throw you out on the roads. Nobody will know we killed you. Everybody will think you killed yourself.”

On October 28, 2023, Tabriz Intelligence officers summoned Mr. Hosseini by phone. He asked them to send a written summons. They said if he didn’t come on his own, they would come get him and it would be bad for him. The next day he went to the Intelligence Office and the officers told him, “You are nobody. If we kill you right here, nobody will know.”  They told him they would manufacture a record for him and he would be sentenced to prison again. The interrogator from the Tabriz Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office, Branch 1 also told him, “I’m going to send you to be beaten until you reform and you will not publish the pictures of people seeking justice, turning them into heroes.”

Mr. Hosseini was held at the Intelligence Office detention center for four days. On November 1, 2023, he was sent to Tabriz Revolutionary and Public Court, Branch 1. In court, officials forced him to sign some papers. They did not let him read these papers. Eventually, he was released on his own recognizance and by posting bail, but he is worried about the papers that he was forced to sign.

According to the latest information on Mr. Hosseini, he was yet again summoned by phone to the Intelligence Office in Tabriz. It has been said that he was summoned because of the things he published on social media. There is no more recent information about Mr. Hosseini’s situation.

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Sources:

HRANA - March 28, 2022 - June 06, 2022 - March 23, 2024

Iran Wire - Novermber 11, 2023 - November 20, 2023

Campaign in Defense of Political and Civil Prisoners - April 15, 2022

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2022 (Mahsa Amini) Protest background

Nationwide protests were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year old Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini on September 16, 2022. Amini had been arrested by the morality police in Tehran for improper veiling on September 13 and sent brain dead to the hospital. The news of her death triggered protests, which started with a widespread expression of outrage on social media and the gathering of a large crowd in front of the hospital,continued in the city of Saqqez (Kordestan Province), where Mahsa was buried. Popular exasperation over the morality patrols and the veil in general, aggravated by misleading statements of the authorities regarding the cause of Mahsa’s death and the impunity generally granted to state agents for the violence used against detainees led to months of nationwide protests. Initially led by young girls and women who burned their veils, and youth in general, protesters adopted the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom,” chanted during Amini’s burial. The protest rapidly took on a clear anti-regime tone, with protesters calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. 

The scope and duration of the protest was unprecedented. State efforts to withdraw the morality police from the streets and preventative arrests of journalists and political and civil society activists did not stop the protests. By the end of December 2022, protests had taken place in about 164 cities and towns, including localities that had never witnessed protests. Close to 150 universities, high schools, businesses, and groups including oil workers, merchants of the Tehran bazaar (among others), teachers, lawyers (at least 49 of whom had been arrested as of February 1st, 2023), artists, athletes, and even doctors joined these protests in various forms. Despite the violent crackdown and mass arrests, intense protests continued for weeks, at least through November 2022, with reports of sporadic activity continuing through the beginning of 2023.

The State’s crackdown was swift and accompanied by intermittent landline and cellular internet network shutdowns, as well as threats against and arrests of victims’ family members, factors which posed a serious challenge to monitoring protests and documenting casualties. The security forces used illegal, excessive, and lethal force with handguns, shotguns, and military assault rifles against protesters. They often targeted protesters’ heads and chests, shot them at close range, and in the back. Security forces have targeted faces with pellets, causing hundreds of protesters to lose their eyesight, and according to some reports women’s genitalia. The bloodiest crackdown took place on September 30th in Zahedan, Baluchestan Province, where a protest began at the end of the Friday sermon. The death toll is reported to be above 90 for that day. Security forces shot protesters outside and worshipers inside the Mosala prayer hall. Many injured protesters, fearing arrest, did not go to hospitals where security forces have reportedly arrested injured protesters before and after they were treated.

 By February 1, 2023, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported the number of recorded protests to be 1,262. The death toll, including protesters and passersby, stood at 527, of whom 71 were children. The number of arrests (including of wounded protesters) was estimated at a minimum at 22,000 , of whom 766 had already been tried and convicted. More than 100 protesters were at risk of capital punishment, and four had been executed in December 2022 and January 2023 without minimum standards of due process. Authorities also claimed 70 casualties among state forces, though there are consistent reports from families of killed protesters indicating authorities have pressured them or offered them rewards to falsely register their loved ones as such. Protesters, human rights groups, and the media have reported cases of beatings, torture (including to coerce confessions), and sexual assaults. Detainees have no access to lawyers during interrogations and their confessions are used in courts as evidence.

Public support and international solidarity with protesters have also been unprecedented (the use of the hashtag #MahsaAmini in Farsi and English broke world records) and on November 24, 2022, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for the creation of a fact finding mission to “Thoroughly and independently investigate alleged human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran related to the protests that began on 16 September 2022, especially with respect to women and children.”