Iranian security forces have reportedly arrested two Kurdish Sunni clerics who had voiced support for anti-government protests that have rocked the country for more than four months.
Loghman Amini and Ebrahim Karimi were arrested on January 30 while they were traveling between the cities of Sanandaj and Marivan, in the western province of Kurdistan, according to the Kurdish news agency Kordpa.
Government forces also searched their houses.
The two village imams had previously been summoned to a Clerical Special Court for supporting the demonstrators in their sermons.
The authorities have cracked down hard on the nationwide protests triggered by the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police.
The Islamic Republic has unleashed a brutal crackdown on the protest movement, killing more than 520 people and detaining over 18,000, activists say.
The demonstrations and state clampdown have been particularly intense in the country’s western Kurdish areas and Sistan and Baluchistan province, home to Iran’s Sunni Baluch minority.
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