Zia Nabavi and Hasti Amiri, student activists, summoned again to serve prison sentences

Zia Nabavi and Hasti Amiri, student activists protesting the serial poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran, have been summoned again to serve their one-year prison sentences. Mr. Nabavi announced on social media platform 'X' that they will go to Evin prison on April 7. In a series of tweets, he criticized the lack of 'any convincing explanation to the public' regarding the serial poisonings that occurred mainly in girls' schools during the winter of 2022, as well as the failure to hold accountable the 'perpetrators and instigators' of these events. This former political prisoner described the 'legal prosecution' and 'punishment' of those protesting the poisonings as 'ridiculous' and 'oppressive.' He referred to the students' protest at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran as 'the darkest day in this university in the past two or three decades' and explained the 'beatings' of students by security forces and the banning of many protesting students from entering the university. Zia Nabavi and Hasti Amiri were accused of 'propaganda against the regime' and sentenced to one year in prison by Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran for participating in the March 7, 2023, protest against the serial poisonings of school students. They were also summoned in November 2023 to serve this sentence, but the head of the prosecutor's office postponed the execution of the sentence, citing the need for 're-examination' of the case to prevent 'injustice' against them. Zia Nabavi wrote about this: 'We do not know what happened during this time that made injustice necessary!' In part of his tweet series, he criticized the 'unfairness of his prison sentence,' emphasizing: 'It is painful to feel that others are deliberately and unjustly imposing suffering on you! It hurts to see that you are punished for your most correct actions!' The one-year prison sentence for Zia Nabavi and Hasti Amiri has faced criticism from students and alumni of Allameh Tabatabai University. Over 100 students from this university protested the prison sentences for these two student activists in a statement last November. The president of Allameh Tabatabai University, Abdollah Mo'tamedi, previously claimed that he had an 'educational, nurturing, and paternal' view towards students and that the only tool for dealing with protesting students was 'dialogue.'