Cairo– CAIRO (AP) – government of iran Family members are being detained and assets of exiled Iranian opposition figures are being threatened with seizure, some people told The Associated Press, the latest crackdown on dissenting voices as the war intensifies.
Activists abroad play a key role in monitoring the crackdown, which is complicated by an internet shutdown imposed earlier this year massive nationwide protests Against Islamic theocracy. Monitors say security forces shot and killed thousands of people.
The war with the United States and Israel has intensified threats from authorities against anyone who speaks to outside media or activists. Now that pressure seems to be increasing to intimidate the workers living in exile.
Intelligence agents in Tehran on March 15 detained the brother of former political prisoner Hossein Razzag, who fled to Europe last year, Razzag told the AP.
He said, “My own brother is not political at all and does not do any kind of political activity. This is to put pressure on me.”
Razzagh said that his brother, Ali, was taken from his home in Tehran and that he was able to call his wife “for a few seconds” that night from a detention center run by Iran’s intelligence ministry.
Since then, the family and their lawyer have not been able to contact him. But the intelligence ministry told him it was reviewing his contacts with his brother, Razzagh said.
Behnam Chegini, another activist who escaped, said her 20-year-old niece was detained for a week on March 10. The niece was taken from her parents’ home in the city of Arak soon after her return from Tehran, where her university was closed due to the war.
He was later released on bail and placed on a travel ban.
Chegini, who now lives in France, said the detention was at least partly “because she is my niece and they know it.”
Activist Sareh Sedighi, who fled after the death sentence was overturned in 2021, said her mother was detained at their home in the western city of Urmia last month.
“The Islamic Republic took my mother to silence me,” he said. His mother suffers from health problems and requires daily insulin doses, he said.
And former political prisoner and activist Mahshid Nazemi, who now lives in France, said at least one friend was detained and interrogated about contacts.
Iran’s judiciary has begun freezing the assets of public figures who criticize the country’s rulers under an anti-espionage law. last year’s 12 day war With Israel that punishes media and cultural activities that support Iran’s enemies.
A judiciary spokesman said on state TV on March 31 that more than 200 indictments for confiscation had been issued or were being issued.
Borzou Arjamand, an Iranian actor living in California, learned from news reports that his assets in Iran had been seized. After their vocal support protests in 2022Arjamand was unable to return to Iran. Since then, authorities have blocked his bank accounts.
Arjamand has expressed support on social media for Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last Shah, who has organized an opposition movement abroad and supported US-Israeli attacks.
Putting pressure on exiles means “so that the voice of the Iranian people does not reach the world,” Arjmand said.
At least three other individuals living outside Iran – Star football player Sardar AzmounAccording to two semi-official news agencies in Iran, musician Mohsen Yeghaneh and university professor Ali Sharifi Zarchi – are on the confiscation list. Yeghaneh and Zarchi have expressed support for anti-government protesters on social media.
Iranian security and judicial officials have warned that any new anti-government protests will be responded to with lethal force.
State media regularly report arrests across the country, describing people as “mercenaries” or “agents”, “royal thugs” or “treasonous elements” of Israel and the United States.
Reports alleged that some people sent information to “hostile networks”.
The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights has tracked the detention of several hundred people since the war began on Feb. 28, using its network in the country and state media reports, said Mahmoud Amiri-Moghadam, its director. He said the full number is probably much higher.
Human rights lawyers are also among those detained Nasrin SotoudehTaken by intelligence agents from her home in Tehran, said her daughter Mehraveh Khandan, who lives in Amsterdam. Sotoudeh, 64, was out on bail for health reasons after being previously detained.
There is little information about how the trials are going on, as Israeli airstrikes have targeted buildings associated with the judicial system. “It seems like they are half-hearted. A lot of judges are staying home,” said Moses Barzin, a lawyer with Dadbon, a group of foreign-based rights lawyers.
Some report worsening conditions inside overcrowded prisons. Speaking from Tehran, the wife of a political prisoner held in Iran’s Evin prison worried it could be attacked This was during last year’s war.
“Explosions and smoke could be heard and seen from everywhere in the city. Every time we hear a sound, we get scared,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his family.
This situation has given rise to new efforts to organize the highly fragmented Iranian opposition abroad.
Shortly before the war, Razzagh and others began planning an opposition conference called the Iran Freedom Congress in London to bring together pro-democracy groups. Razzagh represented Soutoudeh and a group of Iran-based opposition figures including a jailed Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi.
He described the conference as a first step toward building a coalition to push for “political change” in Iran.
For decades, Iran’s rulers have quashed organized political opposition. Some activists in the diaspora say the war is worsening those pressures.
Nazemi said of the Iranians, “Israel and the US are saying, OK, if the Islamic Republic doesn’t kill you, let us bomb you. They are being held hostage by both sides.”
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Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
