The semi-official Fars information company stated activist Mostafa Tajzadeh was taken into custody on Friday afternoon and charged with “gathering (to protest) and conspiracy to behave towards the nation’s safety.”
Tajzadeh is a well known activist who has criticized the nation’s high chief and high-ranking officers. He spent years in jail following the disputed 2009 re-election of Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the turmoil that ensued.
In the meantime, Tehran chief prosecutor Ali Salehi was quoted by the judiciary’s Mizan information company on Saturday as endorsing the most recent arrests and saying that actions of these detained “created divisions” that led to “incitement within the media and society.”
On Friday, the state-run IRNA information company reported the arrests of two filmmakers over an enchantment they posted on social media, accusing them of hyperlinks with opposition teams based mostly outdoors the nation and plotting to undermine state safety.
Award-wining filmmaker Mohamad Rasoulof and colleague Mostafa Al-Ahmad had been taken into custody for posting a press release on social media urging members of the Iranian safety forces to put down their weapons. At the very least 70 Iranian filmmakers and film business employees had signed the enchantment.
The hashtag #put_your_gun_down is a reference to the violent crackdown throughout the unrest following a constructing collapse within the southwestern metropolis of Abadan that killed not less than 41 folks earlier this 12 months. The Could 23 collapse dredged up painful reminiscences of previous nationwide disasters and triggered protests in Abadan throughout which police clubbed demonstrators and fired tear gasoline.
Over the previous months, there have been protests in Iran over worth hikes and the slashing of subsidies by the federal government. Additionally, lecturers gathered for weeks, demanding higher pay and dealing situation.
Recollections are additionally recent of Iran’s gasoline worth hike in November 2019, when widespread protests — probably the most violent for the reason that creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 — rocked the nation.
Iran has additionally detained quite a few Europeans in current months, together with two French residents and a Swedish vacationer, because it seeks to achieve leverage within the nuclear negotiations.
Twin nationals and people with Western ties have additionally been arrested, typically on extensively criticized espionage fees, for use as bargaining chips within the negotiations. Tehran denies utilizing detainees to additional its political goals.
Talks to revive Tehran’s tattered nuclear take care of world powers have stalled for months. A current effort to interrupt the impasse between U.S. and Iranian negotiators ended with out making progress in Qatar.
