The Iranian regime is dangerously escalating its physical harassment and pressure on political prisoners, highlighted by a brutal, unprovoked raid on Evin Prison. On Saturday, August 1, 2026, at approximately 11:30 AM, prison guards violently assaulted inmates in the political prisoners’ hall of Evin’s Ward 7. The guards severely beat the prisoners and forcibly transferred six individuals to an unknown location, dragging them away despite their injuries and torn clothes.
Five of the disappeared victims are supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). They include Amir Hossein Moradi, a 26-year-old elite student at Sharif University of Technology who has been held without a single day of furlough since his arrest in April 2020, serving a sentence of six years and eight months. Also targeted were Ehsan Rostami, a sociologist and director of Samandar Publishing and Bookstore, and his cousin Ramin Rostami, both arrested on August 20, 2025.
The other transferred PMOI supporters are 31-year-old Pejman Toobareh-Rizi, who was arrested on January 28, 2025, and sentenced to 20 years in prison, and 58-year-old Mojtaba Taghavi. Taghavi was arrested in March 2024 and sentenced to six years and seven months simply for being the brother of Mohammad Taghavi, a martyred PMOI member executed earlier this year on March 30, 2026. The sixth transferred prisoner is children’s rights activist Afshin Heyratian.
the Iranian Resistance has identified the regime henchmen who orchestrated this criminal raid: Fathollahi (chief of prison guards), Rostami (deputy chief of guards), Sadeghi (deputy head of security), Yousefi (deputy for health affairs), Haghjou (head of inspection), and Mahmoudi (head of Ward 7).
A systematic campaign of death sentences and executions
The raid in Evin is not an isolated incident, but part of a rapidly escalating wave of state violence and retaliatory judicial pressure targeting PMOI members and their families across Iran. These threats are quickly turning into executions. Just days ago, on July 22, 2026, the regime executed 26-year-old PMOI member and law graduate Mehdi Khanaki after subjecting him to months of severe physical and psychological torture. His death brings the total number of executed PMOI members to 11 in the past year alone.
Meanwhile, the judiciary is aggressively issuing death sentences against vulnerable dissidents. Isa Chari, a 37-year-old Baluch laborer and father of two young children, was recently transferred to solitary confinement in Ghezel Hesar Prison and sentenced to death on charges of PMOI membership. Similarly, 22-year-old accounting student Amir Hassan Akbari-Monfared was sentenced for “rebellion.” This retaliatory sentence was based purely on his family ties—four of his relatives were martyred in the 1980s, and another relative was affiliated with the PMOI.
The pressure is also mounting in Ghezel Hesar Prison’s Hall 37, where five political prisoners face extreme conditions and death threats over alleged PMOI ties. Cousins Abolfazl and Omid Rahbar were recently given verbal notice of 20- and 26-year sentences, respectively. Vahid Azizi, a 42-year-old PhD holder arrested during the nationwide uprising, Mostafa Imani, an artist and writer, and Farshid Dolatyari, a driver, have all been held in limbo under intense pressure and threats of execution since their arrests.
Brutality born of desperation and weakness
While the regime attempts to project authority through state-sanctioned murder, these extreme measures actually highlight its fundamental weakness. Terrified of the looming prospect of another nationwide uprising like the one in January 2026, the clerical dictatorship is exploiting the fog of war and regional conflicts to carry out a massive purge of political prisoners.
Tehran is profoundly afraid of the growing gravitation of Iranian youth toward PMOI Resistance Units. This brutality is a clear sign of the persistent uprising of the Iranian people and their brave children against religious fascism, reflecting the regime’s terror of the inevitable explosion of public anger.
Call for international action
The international community bears a direct responsibility to stop this unchecked wave of state terrorism. Silence and inaction only embolden the regime to execute more dissenting youth and repeat the horrific dynamics of the 1988 massacre.
The Iranian Resistance urgently calls on the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran to take immediate action to end the persecution of dissidents and stop the execution of political prisoners. Furthermore, the UN must immediately dispatch international fact-finding missions to inspect Iran’s prisons and clarify the whereabouts and health conditions of the six prisoners vanished from Evin’s Ward 7 before it is too late.