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| Sina Yousefi, Human Rights Lawyer |
In an interview with Voice of America, lawyer Sina Yousefi discussed the extension of the United Nations fact-finding mission on the 2022 protests in Iran, as well as the recent case of Turkish activists arrested in various provinces of Iran and transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison in the first week of February.
Sina Yousefi believes that the activists transferred from various cities to Tehran’s Evin Prison were brought under control under the orders of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
On February 5, 6, and 7, around 30 political activists from Iranian Azerbaijan, as well as Gilan, Alborz, and Tehran provinces, were detained and transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison. Some were temporarily released on civil bail in recent weeks, while the detention period for other activists has been extended.
According to the human rights lawyer, “If a person commits an illegal act, the authority to investigate their case should be in the region where the violation occurred. But when we look at this case, we see that individuals from various cities were detained and transferred to Tehran. This shows that this is a centrally coordinated decision by the Supreme National Security Council to bring them under control and interrogate them.”
Some of the activists transferred to Evin Prison, including Murtaza Parvin and Abdulaziz Azimi Ghadim, held hunger strikes in recent weeks in protest against their illegal detention and the conditions they were held in.
“These activists' charges are unclear, so we can’t say exactly why they were arrested. But it is clear that this is a process orchestrated by the security apparatus,” Yousefi explained.
The lawyer also discussed the UN fact-finding mission on the 2022 protests in Iran, which presented its report at the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. He emphasized the mission's significant role in documenting the large-scale human rights violations committed by the government following the 2022 protests:
“Almost all the countries in the Human Rights Council knew the truth. But it wasn’t documented, and witnesses hadn’t spoken up until the fact-finding mission documented it.”
Yousefi believes that the mandate of the fact-finding mission should have been extended.
“Both because one year was too short to document the events, and because the Islamic Republic continues its repression, it was necessary for the committee’s work to continue,” the human rights lawyer added.
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Sina Yusufi: İran höküməti repressiyaya davam etdiyi üçün BMT faktaraşdırıcı missiyasının da fəaliyyəti uzadılmalı idi