Political Prisoner Accused of 'Disabling Surveillance Cameras' Released

Majid Khushmanzar, a political prisoner who was detained and sentenced on charges of 'disabling surveillance cameras', has been released on leave connected to his freedom from Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad. According to HRANA, the news agency of the Human Rights Activists in Iran, Majid Khushmanzar, who had two months left of his sentence, was released from Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad on Tuesday, February 30. Majid Khushmanzar, a senior traffic control employee in Mashhad, was arrested by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence during the nationwide protests of 2022 on November 4. Following his arrest, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and one year of exile to Taybad by the First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Mashhad, presided over by judges Momeni and Hossein Yazdankhah. The Court of Appeals of Razavi Khorasan Province confirmed this sentence. The charge of 'disabling surveillance cameras' was presented as one of the instances of 'moharebeh' (waging war against God) against him. Subsequently, the Amnesty Commission proposed a reduction of his sentence, and the First Branch of the Criminal Court of Razavi Khorasan Province, presided over by Judge Hossein Imamvardi, reduced his punishment to 30 months in prison. In the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police, hundreds were killed and thousands were injured and arrested in the months after Shahrivar 1401 (September 2022) across Iran. The Islamic Republic described these protests as 'riots', 'chaos', and 'organized actions' with 'foreign intervention', and resorted to severe repression of the protesters through various means, including widespread arrests, abduction and sexual assault of children and adolescents, systematic blinding of protesters, distorting the causes of death of the deceased, and obstructing the delivery of the bodies of the deceased, among others.