by Staff writer, SF
Some Iranian university students are still being held in prison without access to legal counsel, despite the Iranian Regime’s claims that all of the people arrested in connection with the nationwide protests had been released.
A Tehran University student activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing safety reasons, said: “It is not correct to say that all of them have been freed. At least five students are still in detention and they don’t have a lawyer.”
Shortly after the anonymous activist made this announcement, Zahra Rahimi and Vahid Lanjanzadeh from the University of Tehran, who the activist had cited as still detained, were released, according to human rights activist H. Taghipour’s blog.
The student detainees that are still being held are F. Tajmiri and M. Rahmatabadi from the University of Hamadan’s technical college, as well as P. Ramazanian, from the University of Tehran.
All five of them were arrested between January 5 and February 5, 2018.
Shahab Kazemi, head of the University of Hamadan’s technical college, has previously denied that Majid Rahmatabadi was a student at his school, but the University Trade Unions’ Council of Iran (UTUCI) has rejected this claim.
The anonymous student activist said: “When the authorities make these denials, the families get 10 times more worried because we are hearing a lot of reports about deaths and suicides in custody these days.”
Arbitrary Arrests
At least 90 university students were arrested during the nationwide protests in Iran, but some of those arrested were had not even attended the protests. They were rounded up because the Regime thought they might join the protests and wanted to prevent that.
Tehran University Chancellor Mahmoud Nili Ahmadabadi announced, on February 8, that several students remained in prison “even though they were not involved in any political activities on campus”.
He said: “We didn’t have any problems with these students and they didn’t have any problem with the university. We don’t know why they have been detained. I have asked my colleagues to urgently follow up on the cases concerning these student detainees but the security officials are not providing us all the information.”
Regime Lies
Still, the Regime wants you to believe that they have all been freed now, whether the evidence supports it or not.
Back in January, Gholamreza Ghaffari, the Science Ministry’s deputy in charge of cultural and social affairs, said: “All students detained in the recent demonstrations have been freed and none remain in detention.”
This begs the question of why they were still arresting students on February 5, doesn’t it?
