Maziar Seyednejad
Age: 42
Activities/Rights: Workers rights
Status: Evin Prison
Judicial status: 6 years imprisonment
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, forced televised confessions, access to lawyer, lack of due process, unfair trial, prolonged solitary confinement
Maziar Seyednejad is a workers rights activist who was arrested in Ahvaz as part of the crackdown on the Workers Union of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company on 1 December 2018. He was released on a 500 million tomans bail on 18 March 2019. His forced televised confessions were aired on IRIB TV1 in their “20:30” news segment titled “Failed Planning” along with the other Haft Tappeh defendants on 9 January 2019. On 19 December 2020, Branch 4 of the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court sentenced Maziar to three years imprisonment on charges of “membership in an opposition group.” Maziar’s sentence was upheld by Branch 16 of the Khuzestan Court of Appeals on 31 May 2021 and he was rearrested at his home in Tehran on 7 June 2021 and transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison. He was released on bail on 16 August 2021. On 16 January 2023, Maziar was sentenced to two years imprisonment for “membership in communist groups” and a year for “propaganda against the system”by Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court presided by Judge Salavati. He was also sentenced to a two-year ban on leaving the country, membership in parties and groups and use of the internet as additional punishment. He began serving his sentence in Evin Prison on 21 May 2023 where he remains today.