Baha'i Designer's Mother 'Disappeared' by Security Agents on Answering Court Summons

Arsalan Yazdani, an Iranian Baha'i who was arrested and held for 45 days over his faith last year, reports that security forces have now taken his mother, Saeedeh Khozouei, to an unknown location.

Writing on Instagram, Yazdani said Khozouei was detained on April 11 at Evin Courthouse, where she had duly appeared in answer to a summons that had not specified any charge.

The next day Yazdani and his father went to the courthouse to ask about her status but could not speak to the relevant official at Branch 2.

Since then, Yazdani wrote, security agents had called his family from withheld numbers and asked them to drop off any medication she needed to a metro station in Tehran. No other information was given to them.

Yazdani’s wife Samira Ebrahimi, who spoke to the media during his own incarceration last autumn, is also currently out on bail. The Baha’i International Community (BIC) has repeatedly said security-related charges levelled at Baha’is in Iran are “baseless” and a cover for discrimination against Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority group.