Human Rights Watch. Iran: End House Arrests of Mousavi, Karroubi, and Rahnavard

The Iranian authorities should immediately release from arbitrary house arrest two former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, an author and political activist, the Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and six leading human rights groups said today. The authorities should also stop harassing or detaining without cause the couple’s two daughters and Karroubi’s son.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, International Federation for Human Rights, League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, and Reporters Without Borders co-signed today’s appeal.

On February 14, 2011, security and intelligence officials placed the two former presidential candidates and Rahnavard, and Karroubi’s wife, Fatemeh Karroubi, under house arrest after they called for demonstrations to support the popular Arab uprisings across the region. Zahra and Narges Mousavi, daughters of Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, and Mohammad Hossein Karroubi, son of Mehdi Karroubi were arrested on February 11, 2013, two days before the second anniversary of the arbitrary house arrests of their parents and Mehdi Karroubi. They were released later that same day.

As Iran prepares for new presidential elections on June 14, 2013, hundreds of opposition figures and critics of the government, as well as journalists, students, lawyers and other human rights defenders, remain in prison. Many were arrested in the government’s post-2009 election crackdown and sentenced after televised show trials in which they were shown “confessing” to vaguely worded national security ‘crimes,’ including supporting a “velvet revolution.” Since 26 January, Iran’s security and intelligence forces have initiated a new wave of arrests against journalists accused of having “connections” to foreign media, apparently in an effort to silence dissent prior to the presidential election.

“Thirty-four years after the establishment of an Islamic Republic founded upon the principles of freedom and justice, jails in Iran today are overflowing with hundreds of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, many of them ordinary Iranians whose only ‘crime’ was to speak out,” said Ebadi.
Ebadi and the six rights groups called on Iranian authorities to release immediately and unconditionally everyone detained for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, assembly, or association, and to cooperate with UN human rights bodies with a view to improving the current rights situation in Iran.