A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
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 number of students and intellectuals housed there. Evin Prison has been accused of committing "serious human rights abuses" against its political dissidents and critics of the government.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment in Iran.
Roxana Saberi is an American journalist who currently works for CBS News as a correspondent and former Miss North Dakota pageant winner. 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.
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.
The Brussels Islamic State terror cell was a group involved in large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March 2016. The terror cell was connected to the Islamic State (IS), a jihadist terrorist organisation primarily based in Syria and Iraq.
Shahrokh Zamani was an Iranian union activist.
Atena Daemi Khoshknudhani is an Iranian civil rights activist, children's rights activist, human rights activist and political prisoner in Iran. Daemi was last arrested in November 2016 and sentenced seven years prison sentence. Peaceful activities for which she was charged include distributing anti-death penalty leaflets and making posts on Facebook and Twitter criticising Iran's execution record. Later, Daemi and her sisters were arrested and sentenced on charges of having "insulted officers on duty". Subsequent appeals have overturned that conviction and reduced Daemi's original sentence.
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.
Siamak Namazi is an Iranian-American businessman. He had been detained in Evin Prison in Iran from October 13, 2015, until his release.
Asadollah Asadi is a former diplomat of the Iranian embassy in Austria. He was found guilty in the Iranian diplomat terror plot trial.
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.
The trial of Hamid Nouri, an Iranian official detained in Sweden, took place in November 2019. Nouri was found guilty of being a key figure in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, where according to different estimates between 2,800 to 30,000 Iranians were massacred. In early 2021 charges of murder and war crimes were filed against the former Iranian prosecutor, where Nouri was accused of "torture and inhuman treatment." The trial constituted the first time someone has been charged in relation to the 1988 massacre of political prisoners. Nouri was charged with more than 100 murders and "a serious crime against international law", and was expected to provide evidence implicating Ebrahim Raisi, president of Iran, at the time of the trial.
Mohsen Shekari was a 22-year-old Iranian man who was executed by the state of Iran after being convicted of injuring a member of Iran's Basij militia and being accused of Moharebeh, an Arabic word translating to "waging war against God".
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.
Mohammad Boroughani is an Iranian man facing a death sentence for his participation in the Mahsa Amini protests. He was found guilty of Moharebeh, which translates to "Waging War Against God," and was sentenced to death. Boroughani and another death-row inmate, Mohammad Ghobadloo, have emerged as new faces of outrage in Iran in response to the political executions of Mahsa Amini protestors. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Karaj's Rajayi-shahr Prison on January 9, 2023, when word spread that Boroughani and Ghobadloo had been sent to solitary confinement before of their scheduled execution. Boroughani's execution was temporarily halted two days later. Boroughani's trial on October 29, 2022, was also notable because it was the first trial directly linked to the Mahsa Amini protests, which drew widespread condemnation from human rights organizations and the international community.
Mohammad Mehdi Karami was a 21-year-old Iranian-Kurdish man who was executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran for his involvement in the Mahsa Amini protests. He was convicted of Fisad-e-filarz for allegedly being involved in the killing of a Basij militiaman during protests in Karaj commemorating the 40-day anniversary of Hadis Najafi's death. Karami was executed alongside 39-year-old volunteer children's coach Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini, another man who was also convicted of Fisad-e-filarz for his alleged involvement in the same killing. Both Karami and Hosseini asserted their innocence, and human rights organizations have accused Iranian authorities of using "shoddy evidence" to convict them.
Seán Binder is a 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.
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.
