On the morning of Saturday, January 18, 2025, two notorious senior judges of Iran’s regime, Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh, were killed in the Supreme Court. State media announced that the killer was Farshid Asadi, a 31-year-old janitor at the Supreme Court.
Only one day after the killing of Razini and Moghiseh, early the next morning, agents of the Ministry of Intelligence raided the home of the Akbari-Monfared family and arrested Amir Hassan, the family’s 23-year-old son.
He was subjected to severe torture for 24 days, particularly during the first four days, until the Ministry of Intelligence arrested his father, Mohammad Ali Akbari-Monfared, on January 21. Mr. Akbari-Monfared, who contracted polio in childhood, is disabled in both legs. Despite also suffering from severe heart disease and four strokes—including one stroke that, even after several years, has left the right side of his body paralyzed—he has been unable to leave his home in recent years. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Intelligence accused him and his son of supplying a weapon to his cousin once removed, Farshid Asadi (the Supreme Court janitor), or of carrying out “terrorist operations” on behalf of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) is the largest Iranian opposition group. Over the past decades, Iran’s regime has executed 120,000 of its members and supporters.
He is currently hospitalized in Shahr-e Rey, where doctors have considered amputating his leg due to an infection caused by the harsh and unsanitary conditions in the Greater Tehran Prison.
Although nine months later Amir Hassan, his father Mohammad Ali, and their two co-defendants—Arghavan Fallahi and Bijan Kazemi—were acquitted of charges of involvement in the killing of judges Raezani and Moghiseh, Amir Hassan was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture to force a confession. He spent six months in solitary confinement.
Four days later, the interrogators brought his father to see him. They tried to force Amir Hassan to confess, but when he refused, they removed his blindfold. Mr. Akbari-Monfared was sitting in a wheelchair, and the torturers pointed a gun at his head, threatening, “If you don’t confess, we will kill your father.” Amir Hassan refused to give in to the threats. In front of his father, they beat him, tied his legs, and hung him upside down for two hours, repeatedly kicking him in the stomach.
Mr. Akbari-Monfared previously served eight months in prison during the 2000s. He is distantly related to Farshid Asadi, the man said to have shot the two notorious Supreme Court judges, as well as to two other political prisoners, Maryam Akbari-Monfared and Reza Akbari-Monfared, who are his cousins. Both Maryam and Reza were sentenced to 17 and 10 years in prison respectively for seeking justice for their family members executed by the regime. Maryam Akbari-Monfared has spent 17 years in prison without a single day of leave.
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In recent years, the main approach of Iran’s regime security forces in dealing with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) has been to arrest and fabricate cases against individuals who were either previously, during the 2000s, accused of supporting or belonging to this organization, or those related by family ties to its members. Ali Younesi, the son of Mir Youssef Younesi—a political prisoner of the 2000s—was arrested in March 2020 and, after months of uncertainty, sentenced to 16 years in prison. Ali was only 19 years old at the time of his arrest. He was a gifted student at Sharif University of Technology and a gold medalist in the 2017 International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad. Similarly, 25-year-old Arghavan Fallahi was arrested during the nationwide protests of 2022, along with her father, a former political prisoner, and her brother.
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The Entire Family Was Arrested; Nothing Is Left for Them
The arrests at the Akbari-Monfared household did not end with Amir Hassan and his father. Sometime later, agents came to arrest the family’s daughter, and two weeks after that, they returned to detain the eldest son.
Fifty-eight-year-old Mohammad Ali Akbari-Monfared is currently in a hospital, handcuffed and shackled, under the watch of two armed guards.
To pressure Amir Hassan, the regime is keeping him among drug traffickers, thieves, and criminal inmates. The Iranian regime intends to break him through unbearable torture and force him to confess to what they demand. He once went on a hunger strike, but the head of the Greater Tehran Prison came and threatened him, saying, “We’ll beat you so badly that you won’t be able to stand up for a week.”
The father and son have no lawyer, as the judiciary refuses to allow any attorney access to their case. Despite the lack of any evidence against them, they remain unlawfully detained in prison.
Families of political prisoners have repeatedly been warned that if a human rights lawyer or an independent attorney takes their case, it will “cause trouble” for them.
Nine months of preliminary investigation for this case is excessively long. Through such prolonged and fabricated cases against families of political prisoners, Iran’s regime seeks to intimidate society. Surrounded by severe social crises and international isolation, the regime sees the suppression of the opposition as its only means of survival.
