Monireh Arabshahi

Age: 53

Activities/Rights: Women’s rights

Status: Released

Judicial status: 9 years and 7 months imprisonment

Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, access to lawyer, lack of due process, unfair trial, denial of medical care, prolonged solitary confinement

Monireh Arabshahi is a civil and women’s rights activist who on International Women’s Day 2019, unveiled along with her daughter, Yasaman Aryani, Mojgan Keshavarz and Raheleh Ahmadi and handed out flowers and pastries to fellow passengers in a women’s only carriage on the Tehran metro, which was filmed and shared widely. She was arrested 11 April 2019 and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security, propaganda against the system and inciting and facilitating corruption and prostitution” by Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on 31 July 2019. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to nine years and seven months in prison by Branch 54 of the Tehran Court of Appeals. Monireh was transferred from Qarchak prison in Varamin to the women’s ward of Evin prison on 13 August 2019. On 21 October 2020, her lawyer, Babak Paknia tweeted that he had been informed that his clients, Monireh and Yasaman were told they had a meeting with their lawyer, which was a lie and upon leaving their ward, they were transferred to Kachouii Prison in Karaj.

Monireh suffers from several illnesses including her thyroid and back (disc). Despite doctors stating that she needed immediate specialist care for her thyroid in December 2020, she was not immediately sent and when she was, she was returned without receiving adequate treatment. She was finally sent on medical furlough on a bail of 500 million tomans to have an operation to remove her thyroid and she returned to prison on 23 July 2021. Monireh was consistently denied adequate medical treatment behind bars. She was released from prison on 15 February 2023 as part of the prison pardons announced to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution. Upon her release, she recorded a video with her daughter chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom.”