Hundreds of people have been killed in protests that Iran has described as “riots”.
Teheran:
Iran released on Friday a human rights activist as well as a journalist arrested during months-long protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, local media reported.
Iranian authorities have arrested thousands of people since nationwide protests broke out following the death of Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd in Iran who was arrested for allegedly violating website rules. women’s clothing in the country.
“Farhad Meysami was arrested in July 2018 and released from prison after serving his sentence,” the reform daily Shargh reported.
Meysami, a doctor and human rights campaigner, refused food for several weeks ahead of the authorities’ response to the protests, his lawyer Mohammad Moghimi said.
Shargh also reported that “Hossein Yazdi, a journalist and political activist, was released from Dastgerd Prison” in the central city of Isfahan on Friday.
Arrested on December 5, Yazdi was sentenced to a year in prison and a two-year travel ban, the daily reported earlier, without detailing the charges against him.
It said Yazdi was “the manager of the Mobin 24 website and the Iran Times news channel”.
On Thursday, social media reports said seven female activists and journalists had been released from Tehran’s Evin prison.
They include campaigner Saba Kordafshari, arrested in 2019 after she campaigned against making the hijab mandatory for women, and celebrity photographer Alieh Motalebzadeh, who recently served time in prison. most began in April last year, the reports said.
It is unclear whether the recent releases are related to an announcement this month from the office of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he had agreed to pardon a large number of convicts, including including a number of people detained because of the protests.
Authorities said hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, were killed in what they described as “riots”.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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