(Paris) Iranian activist and journalist Sepideh Gholian, who announced her release on Wednesday after four years in prison, has been arrested again, activists said on Thursday.
Ms. Gholian, 28, had posted a video on her Twitter and Instagram accounts showing her leaving Evin prison in Tehran and shouting a slogan hostile to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Khamenei the tyrant, we will drag you to the ground!” she said, her hair uncovered, defying the strict dress code imposed on women in Iran.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Ms Gholian was rearrested on Wednesday as she was driving home with her family to their home in Dezful, Khuzestan province.
The NGO had no information on the place of detention of the young woman or on the charges against her.
First arrested in 2018 during strikes at the Haft Tappeh sugar refinery, Sepideh Gholian was briefly released on bail in October 2019.
The labor rights activist was re-arrested in January 2019 and sentenced to serve a five-year prison term for undermining national security.
In prison, she described, through letters and messages sent to her supporters, the abuses to which women are subjected in prisons in Iran.
Many of Iran’s imprisoned women were arrested long before the protests sparked last September 16 by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested by vice squad for allegedly violating the dress code.
But their numbers increased after the protests were suppressed.
Several women have been released recently, including the Franco-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, but activists have denounced this presidential amnesty as a maneuver by the authorities to improve their image and recall that many activists are still in prison.
