Ehsan Akbari was arrested in January 2015 but the charges against him and his whereabouts are unknown. His friends believe he was arrested for posts on Facebook and that he is being held in solitary confinement at Evin Prison, but this has yet to be confirmed.
Name: Ehsan Akbari
Background: Journalist and civil rights activist
Charges: Unknown; charges possibly related to his Facebook activities.
The Revolutionary Guards arrested the journalist and civil rights activist Ehsan Akbari on January 14, 2015.
Following the arrest, guards took Akbari to his home, and confiscated his laptop and some of his other personal belongings. One of Akbari’s friends told IranWire that he had most likely been taken to Ward 2A of Evin Prison, a section of the detention center run by the Revolutionary Guards. According to the friend, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, the agents who arrested him told his family they could visit the prosecutor’s office at Evin Prison in a week’s time to find out additional information about Akbari’s case.
In the run-up to the disputed presidential election of 2009, Akbari worked on the campaign to promote Mir Hossein Moussavi, the reformist candidate. According to Akbari’s friend, he is politically inclined towards the Nationalist-Religious Forces, a coalition of opposition parties, and that this is the first time the Revolutionary Guards have arrested him.
Akbari, who studied journalism, has published a number of articles that have been critical of the political and social situation in Iran. Although no information has been released regarding the charges against him, his friends believe he was detained because of material he posted on Facebook.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the Revolutionary Guards have targeted supporters of the Nationalist-Religious Forces in recent weeks, arresting them in unprecedented numbers.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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