Sepideh Gholian
Age: 28
Activities/Rights: Workers rights
Status: Evin Prison
Judicial status: 2 years imprisonment/new case pending
Violations: Arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, lack of due process, unfair trial, prolonged solitary confinement, forced televised confessions, prison exile
Sepideh Gholiyan is a civil and workers rights activist. She was first arrested on 24 February 2017 and re-arrested on 18 November 2018, while reporting on the Workers Union of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company and released on a bail of 500 million tomans a month later. She later used social media to reveal details of the torture she and Esmaeil Bakhshi had been subjected to by officers during their detention. Her forced televised confessions were aired on IRIB TV1 in their “20:30” news segment titled “Failed Planning” prior to her arrest on 20 January 2019. In September 2019, Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Sepideh to a total of 18 years in prison. This sentence was reduced to five years on appeal at the Tehran Court of Appeals in December 2019. Sepideh made a complaint against IRIB, the editor-in-chief of the 20:30 news section and Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour for producing and airing her forced confession, but the court later acquitted the defendants and closed the case. Following the closure of the complaint against IRIB, Sepideh faced new charges of propaganda against the system but was released on bail. Though Sepideh was included in the judiciary’s amnesty list in May 2020, it was later revealed that her pardon had been revoked. On 21 June 2020, she began serving her five year sentence. She was tried for charges of “propaganda and publishing slander and defamation” in November 2022 which she attended via conference call.
On 15 March 2023, Sepideh was released from Evin Prison after completing her sentence. Outside the prison, she shouted “Khamenei the tyrant, we’ll pull you down!” Hours later, she was arrested while en route to Dezful. She later wrote that she had been badly beaten and threatened with rape in Ward 209 of Evin Prison. Sepideh was sentenced to two years imprisonment and a two-year ban from joining any groups or organisations, using a smartphone and residing in Tehran or its surrounding provinces for charges of “insulting the leader” by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on 5 May 2023 which was upheld less than a month later. On the complaint of Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, a public trial was scheduled for 22 August in which Sepideh said she would attend. However, the trial was held behind closed doors after Sepideh refused to wear the mandatory hijab, for which the judge said a second case would be brought against her. According to her brother, Sepideh spat in Ameneh Sadat’s face “on behalf of the people” at the end of the trial.