Sign the petition to free two Iranian women activists

Alison Clarke
WVoN co-editor

Two more women activists have been arbitrarily detained in Iran.

They are Maryam Bahreman and Mahbubeh Karami, both members of the One Million Signatures Campaign.

Reports suggest that at about 7.30am on May 11 security force officers from the Intelligence Ministry arrived at Maryam Bahreman’s house with a detention order and arrested her for “action against national security”.

They searched her house for three hours, and confiscated some personal items, including her cell phone, her laptop and some books. 

At the time of writing, her whereabouts remains unknown.

Ms Bahreman has been very active for women’s rights in Shiraz for many years, and was the General Secretary of Pars Women’s Association, which was closed in 2007.

On the same day, Mahbubeh Karami, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment in February 2011 on charges of “membership [of a] human rights activists collective”, “propaganda against the system” and “assembly and collusion with intent to commit crimes against the national security”, received a summons to present herself within three days at Evin prison to start serving her sentence.

She went to the prison on May 15, where she was immediately arrested and she remains detained.

Please sign this petition and also write to the Iranian authorities (all details here) asking them to disclose the whereabouts of these women and drop all charges against them.