Security forces arrest student protestor in Iran capital

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 06 – One of the students who took part in an anti-government demonstration last week at Tehran’s Allameh University has been arrested, his mother has said. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 06 – One of the students who took part in an anti-government demonstration last week at Tehran’s Allameh University has been arrested, his mother has said.

Ali Azizi was detained Sunday afternoon, the state-run news agency ISNA reported on Tuesday.

“At 14:30 on Sunday, some people came to our house and arrested my son”, ISNA quoted his mother as saying, adding that she had not been told of the reason for Ali’s arrest.

“When I went to the revolutionary prosecutor’s office, they told me that my son’s name had not yet been added to their register”, she said. “During this time, he has not contacted me, and I do not know of his condition”.

Several hundred students took part in a protest on 30 October on the campus of Allameh University denouncing the recent government-orchestrated crackdown inside Iranian universities.

Iran Focus learnt on Saturday that at least of the students who were detained in the course of the protest have been transferred to the infamous Ward 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Some 20 students were arrested for participating in the rally. Among them were Arman Sedaqati, Behnam Sepehrmand, and Maziar Samiee, who were beaten as they were being detained.

The protestors chanted “death to the dictator” and called on the authorities to free fellow students who had been arrested over the past several months. They also demanded that members of the hard-line Bassij force, an off-shoot of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, be expelled from universities.

Sedaqati , Sepehrmand, and Samiee were taken to Evin’s Ward 209 last Wednesday. It is believed that they had been handed over to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS, or VEVAK). It is unclear as of yet what charges they will face.

Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a modern security prison to house political dissidents, but it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of thousands of political executions. Ward 209 is exclusively set aside for political prisoners.