Jafar Azimzadeh was sentenced in March 2015 to six years in prison after an unfair trial before a Revolutionary Court in Tehran, which convicted him of “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the system”. He also received a two-year ban on “membership in political and social parties, groups or collectives” and “engagement in online space, media and press”. The conviction was based solely on his peaceful trade union activities, including: his work collecting 40,000 workers’ signatures on a petition for a rise in the national minimum wage; his interviews with media outlets based outside Iran; his involvement with founding the Free Union of Workers of Iran; his participation in the 2009 International Workers’ Day rally in Laleh Park in Tehran and other peaceful demonstrations in front of Parliament and the Ministry of Co-operatives, Labour and Social; and his meetings with other trade unionist groups, such as the Syndicate of the Workers of Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company and the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company. He began serving his sentence on 8 November 2015.
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