Call for Release of Acid Attack Activist

Campaigners have called for the release of prominent activist Mehdieh Golrou, who has been held without charge since October 2014.

Security forces arrested Golrou and a number of other protesters on October 25, 2014 three days after participating in a demonstration against the acid attacks on women in Isfahan. This week, Amnesty International was among those calling for her release.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside Isfahan’s court of justice on October 22, calling for the government to protect citizens against the attacks on women. Activists claimed that many MPs had been more concerned with scrutinizing the behavior of women than they were with identifying and arresting the perpetrators of the crimes. Women at the rally held signs that read: “Anti-women speeches are fertile ground for extremists and acid throwers.”

Hardliner websites published images of a number of civil rights activists, including Golrou, on the day of the protests. Golrou also received a number of phone calls to her private cellphone. Three days later, she was arrested and remains in detention to this day.

Campaigners have repeatedly asked Iranian judicial officials why Golrou was arrested and continues to be held, but have received no reply. In one instance, Tehran’s Attorney General, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, told a press conference that “the case is security-related and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Four months after a string of acid attacks in Isfahan, in which one woman died and several were badly injured, the perpetrators remain at large.

Mehdieh Golrou has stated that she did not break the law, and her husband Vahid La’alipour has reiterated this in media interviews.“Mehdieh says that she is even more miserable because she’s innocent,” he told one news site.

Prior to the arrest, Golrou studied Economics at Allameh Tabatabaei University and was once a member of the university’s Islamic Society. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, she contributed to university publications and took part in meetings that reviewed the performance of the government.

When Golrou was in her second year of studies, hardliner cleric Sadredin Shariati was appointed dean of the university.

Shariati set out to make the university more “Islamic,” and took a severe disciplinarian approach toward students and academic staff, sometimes acting illegally. He also set out plans to segregate women and men into separate classrooms and interfered with the university’s publications.

As vice president of the Islamic Society, Mehdieh Golrou played a prominent role in organizing rallies in opposition of Shariati’s actions and policies. She was consequently suspended from university for two semesters in 2006; at this point she needed eight credits to graduate. Then in 2007, Golrou and several other students who had also been suspended formed the Council to Defend the Right to Education.

During Ahmadinejad’s first year as president, in a climate of further government interference, a number of students were banned from declaring their majors. Their academic records and identification cards were stamped with a star that made this restriction clear. Most of the students flagged up under this measure were members of the Council to Defend the Right to Education, which had staged a protest outside the Ministry of Science and the University of Tehran, demanding they be allowed to resume their studies.

Golrou’s suspension from university was repeatedly renewed until the presidential election of 2009, which created yet more difficulties for her. In the run-up to the election, she worked for the Committee to Defend Citizens at the campaign headquarters for the reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. During the wave of arrests that followed the elections, police arrested Golrou at her home on December 7, 2009. At the time, no explanation was given for the arrest but, in spring 2010, the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to two years and four months in prison for “propaganda against the regime” and “gathering and conspiring with the intent to harm national security.”

Shortly after her conviction in 2010, Golrou and a number of other student activists issued a statement from prison and for this, their sentences were extended by six months.

During her detention, she was kept in solitary confinement for a long period of time before being transferred with several other political prisoners to a ward normally reserved for drug addicts. She was frequently prohibited from speaking to her family.

Golrou’s father, a cleric and supporter of the regime, never visited her in prison. Golrou’s only visitor was her husband Vahid La’alipour. Although he was not politically active, agents arrested La’alipour several times before a court eventually sentenced him to a year in prison. Golrou believes her husband’s arrests and prison sentence were intended to pressurize her. In autumn 2011, the prosecutor’s office at Evin Prison summoned La’alipour for the second time. Golrou wrote a letter to judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani. “My husband hasn’t engaged in any political activities and he’s been arrested to pressure me,” the letter said. “I draw your attention to the principle of ‘personal responsibility for crime and punishment’. Has this principle, which is part of the constitution, been observed in the case of my husband and I?”

Golrou and La’alipour have only spent their first wedding anniversary together. Golrou, whose birthday is in September, was behind bars in September 2011. At the time, their second anniversary was coming up, and her husband was preparing to go to prison. “This is our second wedding anniversary,” he wrote to her in a letter. “You have to celebrate within those stone walls and I celebrate it in this cell without walls.”

Golrou was eventually released in May 2012. During the 2013 presidential election, she supported and campaigned for Hassan Rouhani. After Rouhani was elected, many of the students who had been targeted and “branded” during Ahmadinejad’s presidency protested outside the Ministry of Science, appealing to authorities to reinstate them at university. Golrou was among them, and wrote about the futility of the action on her Facebook page.

Campaigners and fellow activists believe Golrou remains incarcerated at Evin prison for her involvement in the protests against the acid attacks in Isfahan, but also for her long career as an activist and supporter of student and civil rights.

Read more about academic freedom in Iran