Three former political prisoners, who were rearrested last year, have been sentenced to overall 28 years imprisonment by the Tehran Revolutionary Court.
Majid Asadi, Payam Shakiba and Mohammad Banazadeh Amirkhizi They were charged with “acting against national security by gathering and conspiring” and “spreading propaganda against the government.”
Majid Asadi was sentenced to 6 yearsbehind bars plus two years living in exile in city of Borazjan, in Bushehr province, south of Iran, while both Mohammad Amirkhizi and Payam Shakiba were each sentenced to 11 years of prison.
Majid Asadi and Mohammad Amirkhizi were also sentenced to two years of forced residence in the towns of Borazjan in Bushehr Province and Nick Shahr in Sistan and Baluchistan Province, respectively.
Political activist Majid Asadi was arrested by agents of the regime’s intelligence ministry on February 18. Assadi was kept in solitary confinement under severe duress for 50 days, and was incarcerated in Evin’s wards 209 and 240 for months before being transferred to the Gohadasht prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. Incidentally, his transfer took place a short while before the foreign ambassadors’ tour of Evin.
Assadi previously served another four-year prison term from 2011 to 2015 for attending a ceremony commemorating the victims of the 1999 student protests in Tehran.
Thirty-year old former students’ rights activist, Payam Shakiba was also arrested in 2009 for his role in disclosing sexual abuse of a female student by an official at Zanjan’s university. He was finally sentenced to six years prison.
Mohammad Amirkhizi, 63, was also arrested in 2009 charged with supporting of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). He was released in 2014, after spending five years behind bars.
Earlier, Amirkhizi’s wife and his brothers were also imprisoned who were later released. The family was charged with meeting Amirkhizi’s children in PMOI’s camp Ashraf in Iraq.
