Imprisoned Mother Demands Justice for Activist Daughter

Rights and political activist Saba Kord Afshari. FILE PHOTO.

In a letter received by Radio Farda, Raheleh Ahmadi, an imprisoned civil rights activist and the mother of activist and political prisoner Saba Kord-Afshari, has protested to the decision of the judiciary to uphold a 15-year sentence for her daughter.

Branch 36 of the Court of Appeals had acquitted Saba Kord-Afshari of the charges but according to her lawyer, Hossein Taj, judiciary officials have informed her that she must serve the sentence. Ms. Ahmadi and her twenty-year-old daughter Saba are both in prison for campaigning against compulsory hijab.

In a tweet on May 30, Hossein Taj, Saba's attorney, announced that the 20-year-old’s sentence would be enforced.

Saba was arrested on August 2, 2018, alongside fifty others, during a series of anti-corruption and anti-mismanagement protests in the Shi'ite clergy-dominated Iran.

She was released on February 14, 2019 when the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei pardoned several prisoners on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

However, security forces stormed Saba's residence and rearrested her on June 2, 2019. They ransacked her house and several items of her personal belongings including her cell phone and laptop were confiscated.

"When will this injustice end? When will lawlessness stop? I will be the voice of my daughter [Saba] for as long as I breathe," Ms. Ahmadi who is serving ش four-year sentence at Evin Prison has written in her letter.

She has also said that her daughter's attorney is chasing the case with the judiciary and that said that she demands that judicial authorities revise the law that has led to contradictory verdicts against her daughter.

"I declare that if the authorities ignore my lawful request, I will use all my lawful rights as a mother to initiate a civil protest action," she wrote.