Kasra Nouri
Age: 33
Activities/Rights: Religious rights, Gonabadi dervish
Status: Released
Judicial status: Pardoned
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, religious rights, access to lawyer, lack of due process, unfair trial, prolonged solitary confinement, familial punishment, cruel and unusual punishment, prison exile
Kasra Nouri is a Gonabadi dervish, activist and former director of "Majzooban-e noor" website which covered news about the rights of the dervish community. First arrested in 2012, he has been arrested five times in the last decade. Kasra was last arrested at the Gonabadi dervishes’ protest in Golestan Haftom in Tehran in February 2018. As a means of exerting extra pressure, his mother and two brothers were arrested and handed long prison terms. At the time of his arrest, Kasra was studying for his MSc in Human Rights at Tehran University. In 2021, hundreds of Tehran University students signed a petition to protest the recent decision to expel Kasra for non-attendance. The campaign succeeded and the decision was reversed. In September, the President of Tehran University, Mahmoud Nili-Ahmadabadi wrote a letter to Head of Judiciary Mohseni Ejei, requesting that Kasra be released from prison. In response, Mr Nili-Ahmadabadi was removed from his position. Imprisoned since 2018, Kasra was prison-exiled to Shiraz Central Prison from Tehran in April after 34 political prisoners went on a mass hunger strike.
On 27 August 2021, Kasra was transferred to an unknown location without notice, forcing his mother to stage a sit-in outside the prison to get a response. He later told his family he had been taken to the Shiraz police station to be interrogated about a joint statement that had not been published yet. On 5 September 2022, his lawyer tweeted that a new case with the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security” had been opened against him for the unpublished statement and he was transferred back to Shiraz Central Prison the next day. He was released from prison with delay on 16 March 2023 as part of the prison pardons announced to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution. His release was made conditional on only his lawyer and family being allowed to wait outside the prison.