Ex-political prisoner once on death row, Saman Karimi, arrested alongside wife Farzaneh Rashidi
Hengaw – Sunday, June 1, 2025
Saman Karimi, a former political prisoner previously sentenced to death, has been re-arrested along with his wife, Farzaneh Rashidi, a university student. The couple was detained last week by agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence in the city of Baneh, and their current whereabouts remain unknown.
According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, more than a week has passed since the arrest of 26-year-old Farzaneh Rashidi, a student at Payam Noor University in Baneh, and her 33-year-old husband, Saman Karimi. Yet, authorities have released no information about their condition or place of detention.
A source close to the Karimi family told Hengaw that on Sunday, May 25, 2025, “intelligence agents violently arrested Saman on a street in Baneh. Following the arrest, the agents raided the couple’s home and later detained his wife while she was attending university.” The source further stated that the agents broke down the front door, searched the entire home, and confiscated several of their personal belongings.
Karimi was first arrested on November 8, 2018, by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents and transferred to the Shahramfar Detention Center in Sanandaj (Sna). After a year in custody, he was tried by Branch 1 of the Sanandaj Revolutionary Court under Judge Saeedi and sentenced to death and eleven years in prison on charges of "rebellion through membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan."
In September 2020, Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence due to flaws in the investigation and returned the case for retrial. Karimi was later released from Sanandaj Central Prison.
On July 17, 2021, Branch 4 of the Kurdistan Provincial Court of Appeals sentenced him to four years in prison for “membership in the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan”, four years for “assembly and collusion against national security”, and one year for “propaganda against the state.” Under Iran’s sentence aggregation law, he served a total of four years.
