Iran’s regime has sentenced political prisoner Mir Yousef Younesi to five years in prison. Mir Yousef Younesi is the father of Ali Younesi, a student of the Sharif University of Technology, who has been in prison since April 2020 on political charges.
Regime security forces arrested Mir Yousef Younesi in January 2023 in Shahrud. He had previously served three years in prison during the shah dictatorship and nine years during the rule of the mullahs on charges of being in touch with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). He is 70 years old and is suffering from ear and abdominal diseases but has been denied access to vital medical care.
Mir Yousef’s son Reza, who is in Sweden, declared on his X account that his father was not taken to court because he refused to wear humiliating prison uniforms. The judge was infuriated and decided to hold the session without the presence of Mir Yousef and by denying his lawyers from representing him.
Ali Younesi went missing on April 10, 2020. After 26 days, the Iranian regime’s judiciary admitted to having apprehended him along with Amir Hossein Moradi, another student.
The two students have been severely tortured and subjected to long solitary confinement. They were sentenced to 16 years in prison by the regime’s judiciary.
Younesi won the gold medal of the 12th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics, held in China in 2018. Earlier, he had won the silver and gold medals of the National Astronomy Olympiad in 2016 and 2017. Amir Hossein also won the Olympiad silver medal in 2017.
Mir Yousef is one of many political prisoners who are facing increasing pressure in Iran’s prisons in recent months.
In a recent act of brutality, Iranian authorities carried out the sentence of 74 lashes against Roya Heshmati, 33, on charges of violating the regime’s medieval hijab laws. The regime’s judiciary accused Roya Heshmati of allegedly promoting and sanctioning unlawful activities (“ebahegari”) and engaging in “organized action in return for receiving some money from abroad.”
Mizan, the news agency of the judiciary, wrote on January 6, 2024, “The verdict was carried out according to the law and sacred Sharia. The specific areas (for the flogging punishment) have been clearly specified in the law and the verdict.”
Roya Heshmati, 33, was sentenced to 74 lashes and fined 1.25 million Tomans.
In another harsh verdict, the regime’s Revolutionary Court in Amol sentenced Farzaneh Barzekar to 24 months in prison. Barzekar is the mother Erfan Rezaii, one of the youths murdered by the regime’s security forces during the 2022 nationwide protests. The judiciary charged Mrs. Barzekar of “insulting” Ali Khamenei, the regime’s supreme leader, and disseminating “propaganda against the state.”
The pressure on political prisoners comes as the regime has gone on a killing spree in its prisons and has ratcheted up executions. All reports indicate that there has been a significant uptick in executions in Iran since the beginning of the war in Gaza. According to reports gathered by the PMOI, the regime has executed at least 864 prisoners during 2023, with 36% happening in the last months of the year, after war broke out in the region.
The regime’s main fear is the emergence of another round of nationwide protests and growing support for the Iranian opposition. But so far, the regime’s methods have not prevented to quell dissent across the country, especially the activities of PMOI Resistance Units.
