Nahal Sahabi and her partner, Behnam Ganji, were under pressure to provide evidence against their colleague, Kuhyar Gudarzi, a well-known human rights activist and a member of the Committee for Human Rights Reporters (CHRR).
Sahabi and Ganji were released a week after the trio were detained this past summer, but Gudarzi still remains in jail.
Ganji committed suicide September 1, followed by Sahabi on September 28, according to a report on CHRR’s website.
The report says Sahabi was suffering from depression in the wake of the death of Ganji, who “mysteriously” killed himself days after his release from detention.
The couple left no explanations for their suicides, but they are thought to have killed themselves after being forced to testify against Gudarzi.
Gudarzi, 25, had previously been arrested in the wake of Iran’s 2009 presidential elections. Charged initially with moharebeh (war against God), a capital offense, he was eventually sentenced to one year on the much milder charge of “spreading propaganda against the regime.”
Gudarzi’s mother, Parvin Mohktareh, was also arrested in 
Kerman and charged with insulting the Supreme Leader, propagandizing against the regime and acting against national security. According to Amnesty International, she was arrested for an interview she gave after her son was jailed in 2009.
The government also sentenced Nargess Mohammadi, deputy head of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), the organization founded by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi with her Nobel award money. Nargess was given a lengthy sentence of 11 years. She was convicted on three charges: acting against national security, propaganda against the regime and membership in Ebadi’s now-outlawed organization.
“I’m not involved in politics, I’m only a human rights activist,” Mohammadi told The Guardian of Britain by phone from Tehran.
“I was informed of the 11-year sentence through my lawyers, who were given an unprecedented 23-page judgment issued by the court in which the judges repeatedly likened my human rights activities to attempts to topple the regime.”
Mohammadi was held in Evin prison, where she has developed what appears to some to be epilepsy. The 39-year-old mother of two momentarily loses control of her muscles.
She was in solitary confinement in Evin when she developed the symptoms, and was then hospitalized. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, is also an activist and has spent about a third of his life in jail, according to The Guardian.
Meanwhile, the website of opposition leader Mir-Hossain Musavi reported that Mohsen Armin, a leading reformist politician for years and former Majlis deputy, had been sentenced to six years in jail,
Armin is a leader of the Mujahideen of the Islamic Revolution, a long-established political party banned by the authorities in 2010. He was released on bail of 2 billion rials ($200,000) in September 2010 after his arrest in July of that year.
Armin’s sentence provoked a reaction from State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who said the US was “deeply concerned” over the sentencing for “exercising his right of freedom of expression and assembly.”
Another statement from Clinton’s office deplored the state of minorities in Iran, saying the United States is “deeply concerned” after Iran sentenced to death Pastor Yousef Nadar-khani for refusing to renounce Christianity.
Clinton accused Iran of hypocrisy for “claiming support for the rights and freedom of Iranian citizens and people in the region” while “the government continues its crackdown on all forms of dissent, belief and assembly.”
