Mohammad Sharifi-Moghaddam
Age: 31
Activities/Rights: Religious rights
Status: Released
Judicial status: Pardoned
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, religious rights, access to lawyer, lack of due process, unfair trial, prolonged solitary confinement, cruel and unusual punishment
Mohammad Sharifi-Moghaddam is a student and Gonabadi dervish activist who was first arrested after security forces stormed a hospital during the December 2017/January 2018 nationwide protests. He was transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison where he was held for ten days before being arrested after Gonabadi dervishes and civil activists staged a sit-in outside the prison. He was rearrested 40 days later in relation to the Gonabadi dervishes’ protest in Golestan Haftom in Tehran in February 2018. In August 2018, He was sentenced to seven years and six months imprisonment on the charge of “acting against national security”, 18 months for “propaganda against the system”, 18 months for “defying official orders”, 18 months for “disrupting public order'' and 74 lashes by Judge Salavati. He went on a 54-day hunger strike in protest against authorities attempting to poison Gonabadi spiritual leader, Noor Ali Tabandeh. While in prison, Mohammad started a project to set up libraries in prison wards. In a letter from prison, he described the physical and psychological torture he was subjected to in order to induce forced confessions during his interrogations. Mohammad was transferred to Evin Prison on 24 July 2022 and survived the 15 October 2022 attack on the prison. He was released from prison on 11 March 2023 as part of the prison pardons announced to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution.