Amnesty InternationalDecember 3, 2016
The Iranian authorities should release immediately and unconditionally four individuals arrested yesterday as security forces quashed heavy-handedly a peaceful gathering to mark the 18th anniversary of the extrajudicial killings of two prominent intellectuals and writers, said Amnesty International.
The four detainees – Baktash Abtin, Fatemeh Sarhadizadeh, Mohammad Mehdipour and Mazdak Zarafshan – are being held in an undisclosed detention centre following their violent arrest yesterday.
They were among a crowd of some 100 people seeking to gather peacefully in Emamzadeh Taher Cemetery in Karaj, near Tehran, yesterday to commemorate the killings of prominent intellectuals and writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja’far Pouyandeh by Ministry of Intelligence officials in 1998. The killings have never been independently investigated. The authorities reacted by deploying police vehicles and dozens of uniformed and plain-clothes law-enforcement officers to disperse the crowd and prevent them from entering the cemetery.
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