Two Kurdish language teachers and board members of the Nozhin Association were arrested

Hengaw, January 18, 2023

Saiwan (Sayvan) Ebrahimi and Soma Pourmohammadi, two more members of the Nozhin Social and Cultural Association's board of directors in Sanandaj City, were abducted by Iranian security forces and taken to an unidentified location as part of the security institutions' ongoing pressure on the association's members.

According to the report received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, on Wednesday, January 18, 2023, 29-year-old Saiwan Ebrahimi, a Kurdish language teacher and a member of the board of directors of Nozhin, was arrested by the government forces in Sanandaj city.

Saiwan Ebrahimi from Kamiyaran was previously arrested by security forces on Tuesday, January 3, while he went to the court in Sanandaj to pursue the case of his wife, Zara Mohammadi, and was released on bail after three days.

On the other hand, at 11 p.m. on January 18, Soma Pourmohammadi, 33 years old, a Kurdish language teacher and another member of the board of directors of the Nozhin Association, was kidnapped in front of the second branch of the Sanandaj court while she went there to follow up on the case of her husband, Idris Minbari.

Idris Minbari, one of the civil activists and a member of the board of directors of the Nozhin Social and Cultural Association of Sanandaj, was kidnapped by the Iranian government forces on Sunday afternoon, December 18, 2022, and is still being held in the Iranian Intelligence Detention Center in Sanandaj.

Earlier, 33-year-old Varan Mohammad Nejad, one of the civil activists and head of the Sanandaj branch of the Nozhin Association, was abducted by IRGC intelligence forces on Thursday, October 13, 2022, and she was temporarily released on bail after three weeks.

Azad Abbasi, one of the civil activists in Dehgolan and the chairman of the board of directors of the Nozhin Association, was kidnapped on September 21, 2022, by government forces. In December of this year, he was sentenced to six years and four months in prison by the second branch of the Dehgolan Criminal Court on charges of assembly, collusion against national security, and propaganda against the regime.

It should be noted that Zara Mohammadi, the head of the Nozhin Association and Saiwan Ebrahimi's wife, was previously sentenced to five years in prison for teaching the Kurdish language and is currently serving her sentence in Sanandaj Correctional Center.