ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian forces arrested six Kurdish environmental activists in Iran’s western Kurdish regions (Rojhelat) on Thursday without search warrants, a human rights organization said, pending additional information with numbers are expected to rise, amid Tehran’s wider ongoing crackdown against dissidents and members of civil society.
Iranian security forces Thursday morning arrested Arya Maroufi, Pshtiwan Tatar, Zanyar Asawar, Saman Khosravi, Hawre Parwaza, and Saro Roshani “without presenting warrants,” Oslo-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported, after “Intelligence Department and IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] Intelligence forces raided Ney village” using “dozens of military and security vehicles.”
“No reliable information is available regarding the reasons for the arrests, the charges against the six men, the authority responsible for holding them, or their place of detention,” Hengaw said, adding that “their families' repeated efforts to obtain information about their whereabouts have so far been unsuccessful.”
The raid comes as Iranian forces continue arrests of dissidents and civil activists, as well as recent clashes with units of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) on Sunday on the outskirts of Mariwan, killing at least one member of the IRGC and injuring others.
PJAK claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, saying that it was carried out in retaliation for the killing of Mehdi Tavakoli, a prominent Kurdish photographer and cultural activist, alongside his sister and mother Maryam, after Iranian security forces opened fire at their vehicle on the Baneh-Mariwan road on July 26.
While Iranian state media claimed that the vehicle's occupants were armed PJAK members killed during a confrontation, Hengaw and the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) rejected the account and identified the three killed individuals as civilians.
Sources told Hengaw the number of arrests is likely to rise as additional information becomes available.
PJAK in late June reported that fighting broke out after Iranian forces launched an operation near the city of Mahabad, in Rojhelat's West Azerbaijan province. Two days earlier, another clash near Baneh had killed two Iranian security personnel, according to Iranian media.
