A Dublin-based Iranian woman has called for increased attention to be focused on Iran’s political prisoners, after her brother was removed from the area of the Tehran prison where he was being held and taken to an unknown location.
Aida Younesi (31), a software engineer, said her brother Ali (25), was taken from the infamous Evin Prison on Wednesday by men who reportedly said they were bringing him for questioning. Since then, her family has no idea of his whereabouts.
Ali Younesi was a university student when he and his friend, Amirhossein Moradi, were arrested in 2020. They were sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2022 for charges that Amnesty International listed as “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security”, “spreading propaganda against the system” and “destruction of public property”, as well as their families’ “real or perceived ties” to the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), an opposition group based outside Iran.
Amnesty International has said trials in Iran are “systematically unfair, resulting in arbitrary detentions. Due process violations included denial of the right to a lawyer from the time of arrest, admission of torture-tainted ‘confessions’ as evidence and summary trials.”
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Aida said she believed that Ali was involved in peaceful student protests – which broke out after Iranian authorities admitted that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at a Ukraine International Airlines passenger plane, killing 176 people – and was arrested to be made an “example” of.
Ali was a gold medal recipient in both Iran’s National Astronomy Olympiad in 2017 and the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad held in China in 2018.
Amnesty International said Ali and Moradi were beaten by ministry of intelligence agents and held in prolonged solitary confinement in harsh conditions to extract forced confessions.
The human rights organisation has called Ali a “prisoner of conscience”.
Younesi’s father, Mir-Yousef, was later arrested in 2022 – she believes this was to put pressure on Ali and the rest of the family not to be vocal. Mir-Yousef (71) remains in Evin prison, to the family’s knowledge. Younesi said he is suffering from various health problems, including diabetes, and that he lost hearing in one ear after he was imprisoned.
She became emotional as she described her father. “I might be biased but I think he’s the kindest, best dad I could have got. You can imagine growing up in Iran ... as a woman it has complications, but when I had my dad as my supporter in every matter it felt really good, it felt safe. He’s really kind, he’s reliable ... He has a big heart.”
She said Ali was constantly curious, with “a good reputation for nice humour and a smiley, kind face.”
Israel has been bombarding Iran for a week, with Iran retaliating using drones and ballistic missiles. On Monday, US president Donald Trump urged people in Tehran – a city of 10 million people – to evacuate.
But prisoners have no way of doing that, Younesi said. “As far as I know ... there is no shelter ... I want my dad, my brother and all political prisoners to be free. I wanted it every day. But nowadays, I want it even more ... seeing the danger that they are in.”
There are no official numbers stating how many political prisoners Iran holds, though they are believed to include about 20 European nationals: foreign and dual nationals can be held by the Iranian regime as bargaining chips, rights groups say. Many political prisoners were arrested during and following the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests that emerged after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating a headscarf law.
In 2023 Iranian human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while locked up in Evin Prison. She was released on medical grounds at the end of last year. “The Middle East is in fire and blood. [Iranian supreme leader] Ali Khamenei took us to hell promising us heaven. [Israeli prime minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is doing the same – promising freedom and democracy, delivering destruction,” she said this week.
On Thursday the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran said “there is growing fear that Iranian authorities may use the cover of war to carry out ... executions [of political prisoners], using them as tools of reprisal and intimidation to further silence dissent and instil fear across the population.”
A report by the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, found that at least 975 people were executed in Iran last year, including about 31 women and one child.
In a statement, the Dublin-based organisation Front Line Defenders said that the day after Israel attacked Iran, a female human rights defender, Motahareh Gounei, was arrested in Tehran following a social-media post in which she criticised the Iranian leadership.
“As the war escalates and international actors remain silent, detained human rights defenders are at high risk,” the organisation said. Since June 13th, it said those in Evin Prison had reported limited access to calls and had “expressed the feeling of being held in limbo while exposed to air strikes, fearing for their families and having their lives in the hands of warmongers, who have no respect for human life and rights.”
It called for the immediate release of human rights defenders, naming 15, including Golrokh Iranee, Nasrin Javadi, Reza Khandan and Zia Nabavi.
For Younesi, attention on this issue is urgent, particularly during a war. “Any political, any human-rights organisation should increase their voice and their concern about political prisoners in Iran,” she said. “Iran’s regime has a really bad history of tightening control and using more force when international attention shifts away from human rights.”
