Baha’i Prisoner of Conscience Barred from Receiving Visitors for Three Weeks

In her last phone conversation, Fariba Kamalabadi, a Baha’i prisoner of conscience in Iran’s Evin Prison, told her family that she has been barred from receiving visitors for three weeks after contributing a letter to the virtual How to Save Iran seminar held last month on Clubhouse.

The virtual seminar, held on April 21-22, saw the participation of more than 40 political, social and human rights activists inside and outside Iran. Some participants even joined from inside the Islamic Republic’s prisons.

Fariba Kamalabadi was arrested on July 31, 2022, at her home in Tehran and since has been held at Evin Prison. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a one-hour trial by Judge Iman Afshari, presiding over the Revolutionary Court’s Branch 26, on charges such as “administering a group belonging to the deviant group [meaning the Baha’is] aimed at undermining national security”.

Kamalabadi and seven other former members of Iran’s informal Baha’i leadership group, the Yaran or “Friends” of Iran, were jailed for a previous 10 years between 2007-2017 on charges which their lawyer, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, said were never substantiated. The activist Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani was one of Kamalabadi’s most prominent supporters during her imprisonment.

Iran’s revolutionary appeals court has yet to rule on the verdict.