September 12-14
The Islamic Republic has tossed a second British-Iranian dual national woman into jail—this time because the woman tried to get into a volleyball game in Tehran.
The 25-year-old British-Iranian woman is being held in solitary confinement after being arrested during a women’s rights protest in Tehran, her supporters told The Daily Telegraph of London.
Ghonche Ghavami was detained outside Azadi Stadium after she and fellow campaigners tried to enter the men-only arena to watch a volleyball match.
The protesters – who all wore white headscarves – had tried to get through heavy security but were arrested, the activists said.
She was reportedly released on bail—but after returning a week later to collect her belongings. Ghavami was arrested and put into solitary confinement in Evin Prison.
Campaigners say she has now been held for two months, with 41 days in an isolation cell. There has been no explanation from the authorities, who have also raided her residence.
Shiva Nazarahari, a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist who herself has spent years behind bars for promoting civil rights in Iran, has taken up Ghavami’s case by opening a Facebook campaign demanding her release.
“We just wanted to occupy a few seats in a stadium to cheer our national volleyball team in a stadium ironically called Azadi [freedom in Persian].
But they [the authorities] told us that there is no law in the country to allow women inside stadiums. In this country, a woman who wants to watch a volleyball match has to be prepared to spend some time in prison later,” she said on her Facebook page.
Another woman who is also a dual British and Iranian national was arrested last year, apparently for criticizing clerical intolerance in Iran in a Facebook comment. She was tried earlier this year sentenced to the astounding term of 20 years in prison.
Roya Saberi-nejad Nobakht is 47 years old and Iranian-born. She had been living in central England near Manchester with her husband, part-time chef Daryoush Taghipour, also 47, for about six years.
Currently there are at least five other expatriates in Iranian prisons—Jason Rezaian, Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini from the United States and Hossain Derakhshan and Saeed Malekpour from Canada.
Last fall, Roya traveled to Iran to visit family and friends for three weeks. Two weeks into the trip, she made a side-visit to Shiraz and was arrested as she arrived at the airport there, her husband told the Manchester Evening News.
He believes the arrest was over comments she made on an Internet chat forum and to friends on Facebook about the Iranian government being too controlling and “too Islamic.”
Daryoush told the newspaper his wife was initially accused of being a spy, taken to Evin prison and then detained on suspicion of plotting to commit crimes against security and insulting Islam.
In May, she and seven others were sentenced to extremely heavy prison terms by the Tehran Revolutionary Court for crimes related to their Facebook use, according to the opposition website Kaleme.