Freedom Movement of Iran Stops Activities

As pressure and intimidation mounts on the members of Iran’s Freedom Movement (FMI) with the goal of stopping them from pursuing their activities, the members of the governing board of the group, the Central Council, announced an unprecedented decision in the group’s 48 year history to suspend its activities.

Prior to this, Iran’s ministry of intelligence had issued an order for the group to stop its activities to which the FMI had responded in these words: “While we express our regret at the regime’s unlawful confrontation aimed at limiting the free flow of information and the demanding that the Freedom Movement of Iran stop the activities of its official website and its analytical website Mizan until further notice, we reserve the right to legally pursue our rights in this regard.”

Arrest and Kidnapping

When massive arrests began in Iran following the June presidential elections, members of FMI were among those detained and Kurosh Zaim may be mentioned as one who was arrested in the protests that followed the announcement of the presidential elections, and who remained in prison for three months.

Prior to the events of Ashura, a new round of arrests had already begun and in this round Ibrahim Yazdi, Mohammad Tavassoli, Hashem Sabaghian, Ali Akrami and Abdolali Bazargan had been summoned to the ministry of intelligence. Yazdi refused to appear at the ministry which resulted in his arrest in his home on December 28th. Yazdi is Iran’s eldest political prisoner, and continues to be held in detention despite his age and deteriorating health.

Prior to his arrest, Yazdi had told security agents through the phone that he could not go to the ministry because of his health but had offered the officials to go to his house if they needed to talk to him or that they could officially summon him. The other FMI officers were threatened in their single, long interrogation session that they had to either stop their activities or face harsher confrontations. But this intimidation did not work and Mohammad Tavasoli even told them that he had his bag ready to go to prison. Being confronted with this, the interrogators gave a few minutes to the detainees to think and then implemented their plans to arrest the leaders of the group and at the same time hold the other officers as ransom. In this regard Mohammad Tavassoli’s daughter Leyla Tavassoli too was arrested by 5 security agents at midnight.

It should be noted that she has no record of any political activity and is not even a member of the FMI. When the 5 security agents forcefully and violently broke into the Tavassoli’s house at midnight Mohammad Tavassoli insisted that he wanted to be with his children and as a response, the agents took his daughter Leyla away in a separate car.

Amir Khorram, a member of the political bureau and the central council of FMI, Mohsen Mohagheghi the son in law of Mehdi Bazargan who was the first Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and former head of this group, along with Sara Tavassoli, Mohammad Tavassoli’s daughter were all arrested on January 3rd and sent to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

In addition to these, Mehdi Motamedi, Mazyar Shokuhi and Mehdi Gholizadeh, all members of FMI were also arrested since then.