{"id":865,"date":"2015-11-20T15:38:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T15:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=865"},"modified":"2015-11-20T15:38:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T15:38:49","slug":"largest-wave-of-arrests-by-irans-revolutionary-guards-since-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=865","title":{"rendered":"Largest Wave of Arrests by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards Since 2009\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Judiciary Denies Knowledge of 170 Recent Arrests<\/strong>
\nNovember 19, 2015\u2014The recently announced arrests of 170 people in Qazvin Province, a number of others in Gilan Province, and five journalists in Tehran, all by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization, amounts to the largest crackdown since the violent state suppression of the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election in Iran.<\/p>\n

Judiciary officials have expressed no knowledge about the arrests in Qazvin and it is not clear whether the Revolutionary Guards acted directly or with a court warrant.
\n\u201cThese arrests by the Revolutionary Guards are effectively abductions, not arrests,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, \u201cbecause the Judiciary says they know nothing about at least 170 of them.\u201d
\n\u201cPeople are transferred to unknown locations, without oversight by the Judiciary,\u201d continued Ghaemi, \u201cand if the Judiciary disavows knowledge of it, that means the Guards are arresting people without judicial warrants.\u201d
\nThe Revolutionary Guards\u2019 Gerdab website\u00a0reported on October 16, 2015, that the Guards\u2019 cyber unit in Qazvin Province had arrested 170 \u201cmanagers of groups active in mobile social networks.\u201d
\nTheir announcement, which was also carried by the Fars\u00a0and Tasnim\u00a0news agencies, both of which are close to the Revolutionary Guards, claimed that those who were arrested were acting \u201cagainst moral security\u201d and distributing \u201cindecent and immoral\u201d content in the form of text and images that \u201cencouraged people to commit obscene acts\u201d and \u201cinsult ethnic minorities, officials and distinguished national figures.\u201d
\nWhile the report said that a number of the 170 people arrested in Qazvin were handed over to the \u201crelevant authorities\u201d for judicial processing, Judiciary Spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei denied\u00a0the arrests the following day.\u00a0\u201cWe asked the Judiciary officials in Qazvin and found out that the recent report regarding the arrest of people involved in immoral websites is untrue,\u201d Ejei said.
\nMeanwhile five journalists were also arrested by the Revolutionary Guards on November 2, 2015, in Tehran. They are Issa Saharkhiz, Ehsan Mazandarani, Afarin Chitsaz, Saman Safarzaie and one other person whom the Guards have not yet identified. The day after the arrests, the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization took responsibility for the arrests and claimed the accused were \u201cmembers of an infiltration group connected to the US and UK.\u201d
\nPresident Hassan Rouhani criticized the recent arrests, but the Revolutionary Guards defended their actions as an \u201corganized and powerful operation\u201d by \u201canonymous soldiers of Imam Zaman.\u201d Authorities in Iran routinely refer to intelligence agents as soldiers of Imam Zaman, who was the Twelfth Shiite Imam.
\nAli Shamkhani, a member of Iran\u2019s National Security Council, said in a press conference on November 10, 2015, that the arrested journalists would be released soon. \u201cIt seems these friends [the arrested journalists] don\u2019t have a problem. They were told that what they did was wrong and they have accepted it, although some of them said they were not aware [that they were doing anything wrong].\u201d
\nNo other official has made any statement regarding releasing the journalists whose whereabouts are still unknown. One of the arrested journalists, Isa Saharkhiz, was barred from writing for newspapers but had been posting reformist political views critical of the government on his Facebook page.\u00a0The other three were also associated with reformist political and social writings, or, in the case of Afarin Chitsaz, published columns in the Iran newspaper, the official publication of the Rouhani administration.
\nIn addition, an official in charge of the Revolutionary Guards cyber unit in Gilan Province told the Tasnim News Agency on November 10, 2015, that a number of people involved in \u201cinciting Azari-language speakers\u201d had been arrested. The number of people arrested and their identities have not been revealed.
\nA day after the Revolutionary Guards took responsibility for the arrest of the five journalists, President Rouhani warned against the harsh treatment of critics. \u201cWe mustn\u2019t pick one or two people from here and there on excuses, in order to fabricate a case for them, and then exaggerate this case in the country and say this line is the \u201cline of infiltration,\u201d Rouhani said.
\nMember of Parliament Ali Motahari also criticized\u00a0the arrests: \u201cWhy were the recent arrests carried out by the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization? Don\u2019t we have an Intelligence Ministry? The Guards say they will do whatever they want,\u201d he said.
\nThese arrests by the Revolutionary Guards are part and parcel of a broader crackdown by hardliners in Iran that has gathered steam ever since the Rouhani administration reached a nuclear deal with world powers. Numerous journalists, peaceful activists, reformists, and cultural figures have been arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
\n\u201cThe Revolutionary Guards, backed by Ayatollah Khamenei, are acting outside the boundaries of Iran\u2019s own laws to sow fear and stamp out independent voices,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cThey are desperate to maintain their control over the domestic sphere, in a context dramatically changed by the nuclear deal, and their increasingly lawless behavior to achieve this bodes poorly for the future of basic civil rights and liberties in Iran.\u201d
\nFollow the\u00a0Campaign on Facebook and Twitter
\nFor the latest human rights developments in Iran visit the Campaign\u2019s website
\nFor interviews, contact:
\nHadi Ghaemi at +1-917-669-5996, hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judiciary Denies Knowledge of 170 Recent Arrests November 19, 2015\u2014The recently announced arrests of 170 people in Qazvin Province, a number of others in Gilan Province, and five journalists in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[243],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-irans-revolutionary-guards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}