The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations related organization working in the field of migration. The organization implements operational assistance programmes for migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
Evin Prison is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. The prison has been the primary site for the housing of Iran's political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Iranian Revolution, in a purpose-built wing nicknamed "Evin University" due to the high number of students and intellectuals detained there. Evin Prison has been accused of committing "serious human rights abuses" against its political dissidents and critics of the government.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence." The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
Arbitrary arrest and arbitrary detention is the arrest or detention of an individual in a case in which there is no likelihood or evidence that they committed a crime against legal statute, or in which there has been no proper due process of law or order.
Roxana Saberi is an American journalist who works as a correspondent for CBS News. In 2009, she was held prisoner in Iran's Evin Prison for 101 days under accusations of espionage. She subsequently wrote a book about the experience.
Adnan Hassanpour is an Iranian-Kurdish journalist who was sentenced to death in Iran in 2007 and reversed a year later. He was re-tried on the capital charges of espionage and working with outlawed parties. In September 2016 he was released, after almost 10 years in prison.
The United Arab Emirates Five are five activists who were arrested in April 2011 on charges of breaking United Arab Emirates law of defamation by insulting heads of state, namely UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, vice president Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, through running an website that expressed anti-government views.
The Baháʼí 7, also known as the "Yaran" (friends), were seven Iranian Baháʼí community leaders arrested in 2008 who served 10-year prison sentences in Iran. The seven prisoners of conscience were Mahvash Sabet, Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian-British dual citizen who was detained in Iran from 3 April 2016 as part of a long-running dispute between Britain and Iran. In early September 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of plotting to topple the Iranian government. While in prison, she went on at least three hunger strikes trying to persuade Iranian authorities to provide medical treatment for her health problems. She was temporarily released on 17 March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, but subject to electronic monitoring.
Ahmad Reza Djalali is an Iranian-Swedish disaster medicine doctor, lecturer, and researcher. He has worked in several universities in Europe, among which Karolinska University of Sweden, where he had also attended his PhD program, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale (Italy), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). He also cooperated with universities in Iran and is in contact with universities worldwide.
Saba Kord Afshari is an Iranian political prisoner. She appeared without a head scarf in public, in defiance of Iran’s compulsory hijab laws, and posted a video about it on social media.
Asadollah Asadi is a former diplomat of the Iranian embassy in Austria. He was found guilty in the Iranian diplomat terror plot trial.
Jamshid Sharmahd is a German and Iranian journalist and software engineer.
On 27 November 2020, Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi and three other Iranian citizens were tried in Belgium, charged with plotting to bomb a 2018 rally of National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political wing of the exiled Iranian political party People's Mujahedin of Iran in France. The trial established that Assadi had smuggled explosives from Iran and was acting on instructions of high-ranking Iranian officials. The charges included "attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group." This is the first trial where a EU country charged an Iranian official for terrorism.
Kai Li is an American businessman who has been detained in China since 2016. The United States government considers Li to be wrongfully detained under the Levinson Act. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Li's detention to be arbitrary.
Sarah Mardini, alternative spelling Sara Mardini, is a Syrian former competition swimmer, lifeguard and human rights activist. Fleeing her country in 2015 during the Syrian civil war with her sister, Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini, they pulled their boat with other refugees towards the Mediterranean coast of Greece, saving themselves and the other passengers. Continuing their journey across the Balkans, they reached Berlin, Germany, the same year. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023, alongside her sister.
Seán Binder is an Irish German-born human rights activist and certified rescue diver who has spent most of his life in Ireland. The son of a refugee father from Vietnam and a German mother, he grew up in Ireland and later studied at universities in Dublin and London. From 2017 to 2018, he volunteered with a humanitarian non-governmental organization on Lesbos island, Greece, assisting refugees arriving in small boats from the nearby Turkish coast.
Throughout its history and into the present, the United States has held political prisoners, people whose detention is based substantially on political motives. Prominent U.S. political prisoners have included anti-war socialists, civil rights movement activists, conscientious objectors, and War on Terrorism detainees.
Johan Floderus is a Swedish diplomat and European Union official. He first started working for the European Commission in 2019, serving as an aide to the then-incumbent European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, before joining the European External Action Service two years later.
