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Abdolreza Ghanbari and Ali Akbar Baghani, members of the Iranian Teacher Trade Associations, for whom Education International had launched a solidarity campaign, have been released. Ghanbari had been awaiting execution for 2 years before his sentence was commuted to 15 years’ imprisonment.

Education International (EI) had been campaigning consistently for the release of Abdolreza Ghanbari, a 45-year-old lecturer at Payam e Nour University. He was arrested in January 2010 and charged with ‘Moharebeh’ (enmity towards God) for allegedly receiving unsolicited emails from an armed opposition group, to which he does not belong.

Forced to confess

While in detention at the Evin Prison, Professor Ghanbari was interrogated for 25 days in a row and forced to confess to unproven charges. Ghanbari was unfairly tried and sentenced to capital punishment by the Tehran Revolutionary Court. The sentence was upheld on appeal and his request for pardon had been rejected in February 2012 by the Commission of Justice.

In June 2013, the Tehran Revolutionary Court reviewed Ghanbari’s case and sentenced him to 15 years’ jail and exile in Borazjaan, in the South of Iran, thereby commuting the death sentence.

Arbitrary detention

Ali Akbar Baghani, together with Mohammad Beheshti Langeroudi, had been summoned on 24 April 2010 to the Intelligence Ministry’s Tehran Investigation Office. Five days later, their houses were both attacked and searched by intelligence agents, and they were subsequently detained, with no information given as to their whereabouts or the legal basis for their arrest.

Education International also deplores that other Iranian education unionists are still imprisoned. This is the case for Mohammad Beheshti Langeroudi, as well as Esmail Abdi, leader of the Tehran branch of the Iranian Teachers' Trade Association, unjustly sentenced to six years' imprisonment by the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court.

A LabourStart campaign urging Iran’s public authorities to release Esmail Abdi can be signed here.