but allowed to stay home back to jail to serve out their terms. One of those ordered back is 81-year-old Ebrahim Yazdi, who no longer has an active role in the opposition.
Human Rights Watch highlighted the case of Yazdi, the former head of the Freedom Movement of Iran, who, despite ailing health, faces an eight-year sentence for charges “solely relating to the exercise of his rights to freedom of association and speech,” according to the rights watchdog.
In December 2011, Yazdi was convicted of, among other offences, “assembly and collusion against national security,” “propaganda against the regime” and “establishing and leading the 
Freedom Movement,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The Freedom Movement was founded 50 years ago by Mehdi Bazargan, who became the first prime minister after the revolution. His cabinet, including then-Foreign Minister Yazdi, resigned in November 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini supported the seizure of the US Embassy. Yazdi took over the party’s leadership when Bazargan died, but resigned a year ago.
Given Yazdi’s age and ill health, Human Rights Watch says his sentence amounts to a death sentence. Yazdi suffers both from cancer and a heart condition. Five members of his party have also been sentenced to prison.
“Authorities haven’t provided any evidence that Yazdi, one of the country’s most prominent political leaders, has done anything but run an opposition party and speak out against the government – actions that should never subject him to prosecution in Iran or anywhere else,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Yazdi has been arrested three times since the 2009 presidential elections but has now been told by Evin prison authorities that he has 20 days to surrender to serve his eight-year sentence.
Yazdi is hardly the only activist facing jail. According to the US State Department, there are 90 journalists in Iranian prisons. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland highlighted the case of Mu-hammad Seddigh Kaboudvand, who was sentenced in 2008 to 11 years on charges of “acting against national security and engaging in propaganda against the state.”
“We take this opportunity to call on the Iranian government to release Kaboudvand and the some 90 other journalists it’s currently holding in Iranian prisons,” she said.
Last week, Reporters Without Borders “strongly condemned” the arrest of human rights activist Narges Muham-madi, who worked with Iran’s Nobel Prize-winning activist, Shirin Ebadi, currently in exile in the UK.
Authorities have put Muhammadi in Evin to serve a six-year term, but there are “credible reports” of her deterioratig health, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Muhammadi was the deputy head of Ebadi’s Human Rights Defenders Center, before it was dissolved under orders from the government. The center had offered pro bono legal services in human rights cases. Muhammadi has been charged with “assembly and collusion against national security, membership in the Human Rights Defenders Center and propaganda activities against the Islamic Republic regime,” according to court documents.
She was sentenced to 11 years, but her sentence has been reduced to six upon appeal.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Soleimani-nia, a prominent literary translator, is staging a hunger strike against his detention on unknown charges. He is refusing to take solid food, limiting his dietary intake only to salted and sugared water. He was detained in January and is being held in solitary confinement at Evin prison.
According to sources, his relatives say Soleimani-nia sounds weak and fragile. Firoozeh Dumas – the Iranian-Americna author of the English-language book “Funny in Farsi,” which Soleimani-nia translated – described him as “a very gentile soul.”
“He’s a very innocent, very delicate man. I don’t think he would physically survive” harsh prison conditions, she said.