Amnesty International calls for the release of Mehran Raouf, a British-Iranian citizen

Amnesty International has called for the release of Mehran Raouf, a labor activist and Iranian-British citizen who has been in the custody of the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence service since late October.

Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday, March 25, that Mehran Rauf, 64, was arrested on October 15 of this year during a raid by IRGC intelligence agents on his home in Tehran and has been held in Ward 2A of Evin Prison since then.

This human rights organization has identified Mehran Rauf as a civil activist defending workers' rights. At the same time as his arrest, a number of other labor activists were also arrested in other parts of Iran, and one of these detainees was later sentenced to 16 years in prison.

According to Amnesty International, Mehran Rauf is being held in solitary confinement in a prison under the supervision of the IRGC's Intelligence Organization in Evin, which "is a cruel form of torture and violates international law," and he is even "deprived of access to a lawyer, contact with his family, and other legal rights of a detainee."

Human rights organizations and previously imprisoned activists say that Ward 2A in Evin Prison is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence service, commanded by Hossein Taeb, and that Evin Prison officials do not have access to it.

Amnesty International considers Mr. Rauf to be one of dozens of dual citizens who have been arrested in recent years by Iranian government institutions, particularly the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization, and sentenced to long-term imprisonment in show trials, effectively being held hostage for the purposes of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In its letter to Ebrahim Raisi, the head of Iran's judiciary, Amnesty International has called for immediate action to ensure that Mr. Rauf enjoys all the legal rights of a detainee.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has not responded to the report of the arrest of a dual Iranian-British citizen and the letter sent by Amnesty International to the head of the judiciary.

HRANA, the news agency of the Human Rights Activists Association of Iran, called Mehran Rauf a labor activist who had been arrested by security forces in Tehran and transferred to an "unknown location" four days after his arrest.

HRANA recently reported that there is still no information about Mehran Rauf's fate, while labor commissions in Spain issued a statement expressing solidarity with him and the labor activists of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane industrial complex.

Human rights groups have said that the fact that Mr. Mehran Rauf holds British citizenship due to his years of living in the country puts him at greater risk from Iranian authorities.

In its four-decade history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has had a long history of detaining dual-national or foreign citizens and charging them with a variety of charges, including espionage, to advance its goals against other countries.

Whenever various political, nuclear, and military crises between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Western countries have intensified, the arrests of dual citizens have increased, and usually the IRGC Intelligence Organization is the institution that carries out these arrests.

On March 2, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported the arrest of a dual Iranian-French citizen and another citizen living in Germany in Iran, linking it to the case of Asadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat in Europe who was accused and convicted of terrorism.

Citing its sources, Le Figaro assessed that the arrest of these two individuals was a pre-planned plan by the Revolutionary Guards to kidnap more dual-nationals as a possible deal in exchange for the release of Assadollah Assadi from a Belgian prison.

Last month, Mr. Asadi was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of plotting a terrorist attack on French soil against a gathering of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran by delivering a package of explosives to an Iranian couple living in Germany; a charge that prompted a sharp reaction and firm denial from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Source: Radio Farda