Researcher Shayan Houshyar arrested to serve prison sentence

Hengaw – Monday, August 3, 2026

Shayan Houshyar, a Turkish researcher from Urmia and a doctoral student in Iranian history, has been arrested to begin serving a prison sentence of three years and eight months after an appeals court upheld his conviction.

According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Houshyar, a civil activist from Urmia and a Ph.D. candidate in Iranian history at Islamic Azad University in Tehran, was arrested on August 2, 2026, to serve his sentence.

He was sentenced by Branch 1 of the Urmia Revolutionary Court to three years and eight months in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state.” The Appeals Court upheld the sentence in full despite his defense arguments and the academic and critical nature of his writings.

The charges stemmed from Houshyar’s expression of scholarly views and his criticism of ethnic hate speech.

Houshyar was previously arrested by Iranian security forces on October 14, 2025, and transferred to Urmia Central Prison. He was later released on bail pending the outcome of judicial proceedings.

The case against Houshyar was initiated after he published a statement criticizing a wave of insults and ethnically inflammatory slogans directed at Kurdish population at Urmia’s Bagheri Stadium. In his statement, he argued that “no nation can achieve dignity by denying another nation,” defended the rights of Kurdish people to preserve their culture and celebrate in their homeland, and called for peaceful coexistence between Kurdish and Turkish communities in Urmia.