A member of Shiraz city council in Iran was taken from his home to prison to serve a one-year sentence Sunday June 2, his wife said in a tweet.
Mehdi Hajati was first arrested and detained for ten days last September for defending the rights of the Baha’i minority, which is severely persecuted by the Islamic Republic, especially the conservative clerics and hardliner security force. He was free on bail.
His wife Zohreh Rastegari said in her tweet that a day earlier they received a text message that he has been sentenced to one year and they took action to enforce the verdict today.
His told the official government news agency IRNA that Mr. Hajati has been transferred to Abdel Abad prison.
His legal trouble started when last year he tweeted, “In the past ten days I have knocked on many doors to get two Baha’i friends released from detention, without success. As long as we face foreign enemies, our generation has a duty to reform the judicial and other procedures that endanger social justice”. He was charged with assisting the Baha’is.
ساعتی پیش ماموران باحضور در منزل ما،همسرم #مهدی_حاجتی را برای اجرای حکم یکسال حبس به زندان منتقل کردند. دیروز پیامکی مبنی بر صدور حکم به دست ما رسید و امروز اجرا شد. @MehdiHajati pic.twitter.com/GD36PbPHcT
— Zohreh Rastegari (@RastegariZohreh) June 2, 2019