Elections in Iran: Arrest The Opposition

Still image from Guardian database of Iran's prisoners of conscience



In an effort to insure that only the "right kind of people" are allowed to participate in Iran's shame elections the government has started arresting and detaining those seen as a threat to Iran's religious leaders.

Human rights campaigners in Iran, speaking on condition of anonymity, say state repression has intensified in the runup to the polls on 14 June amid authorities' concern of a repeat of the anti-government protests that followed the 2009 election, which was described as a sedition led by the country's foreign enemies.
After the 2009 election, which gave president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office, thousands of Green movement activists took to the streets to protest against the official results, which they alleged had been rigged. They were met by anti-riot forces who killed dozens of protesters and arrested hundreds more.
Those still in jail include at least 391 students, 90 teachers and professors, 65 writers, poets and film-makers, 20 lawyers and 131 identified as journalists or bloggers. But almost 1,900 prisoners are either awaiting sentencing or the details of their jail terms have not been publicly disclosed. Most of them were sentenced under vague charges, such as acting against the national security or propaganda against the regime, and have been denied adequate legal representation.
Of the religious and ethnic minorities in Iranian prisons, at least 572 are Kurds, 203 Arabs, 192 Azeris, 240 Baha'is, 13 Balouchs, 40 Christians, 98 Sufis, Zoroastrians and one Jew, the research shows.

Here are the details of some of those still imprisoned

Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, a 28-year-old blogger who spent 376 days in solitary confinement after his arrest in 2009, has notified friends via Facebook that he was due to return to jail despite his deteriorating health condition. In jail, he developed a kidney disease and was operated on at least four times. He has staged a number of hunger strikes in protest at his 15-year jail sentence.
Ronaghi Maleki, an expert in computer programming and setting up websites aimed at circumventing online censorship, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2010 on charges of "spreading propaganda against the regime", "membership of the internet group Iran Proxy" and "insulting the Iranian supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and the president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]".
During his time out, Ronaghi Maleki wrote a letter to his interrogator in which he said: "We are worried about Iran and Iranians, we are not the enemy!"
Kouhyar Goudarzi, a 27-year-old journalist from the Committee for Human Rights Reporters (CHRR) in Iran, was sentenced to five years in jail in March 2012 but fled Iran to Turkey while on a temporarily leave from prison. The CHRR was established in 2004 with the aim of reporting violations of human rights in Iran.