Charity Worker Akram Nasirian Arrested In Tehran

Iran-HRM – Charity Worker Akram Nasirian was arrested by unidentified security agents in Tehran for unknown reasons, on April 29, 2019, according to the “Voice of Iranian Women” charity organization.

Ms. Akram Nasirian, who prior to her arrest had worked in flood-impacted areas of the country, disappeared on Monday, April 29.

Looking for her, her family was informed by Tehran’s Detective Bureau that her cell-phone shows her location to be in the Evin region in Tehran.

After her family pursued the issue, it became clear that she had been arrested in the street and taken to Evin Prison.

Nasirian made a brief phone call to her family the following day and said she was being held for interrogations and that a case had been filed for her with the second branch of the Prosecutor’s Office in Evin.

“My mother Akram Nasirian was arrested on the street on Monday, April 29 [2019] and taken to Evin Prison without anyone informing us,” her son Nima Mehdipour said in a video message on Instagram.

He added: “For what crime have you arrested my mother? For teaching Afghan refugees to read and write and helping flood victims in the south of the country? I call on all social activists and human rights groups to work for her immediate and unconditional release. Free Akram Nasirian.”

Charity Worker Akram Nasirian, a member of the Association of the Voice of Iranian Women (Neday-e Zanan-e Iran) charity organization, was a member of a relief group assisting the flood victims.

Nasirian is not the first person to be arrested after working in flood-impacted areas in Iran.

In April, agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) intelligence organization arrested dozens of Ahwazi Arab volunteers as they were trying to help people in the flood-stricken areas of Khuzestan Province, southeast Iran.

All Iranian provinces have been affected by floods. At least two million citizens are in need of humanitarian aid and more than half a million have been displaced, losing their homes and all their belongings. Instead of sheltering people, the regime’s Red Crescent is selling them tents for 500,000 tomans, each.

According to an MP, in Khuzestan, alone, at least 300,000 houses have been destroyed.

Hedayatollah Khademi said if the damages by floods is equal if not more than the damages caused by the eight-year war with Iraq. Other sources describe the incident as the worst natural disaster happening in Iran in the past 15 years, affecting 2,000 cities and town in 31 provinces.

The situation of flood victims is critical, as many are stranded in remote areas without access to food, clean water, medicine, clothing and heating.

And yet the regime, instead of attending to the needs of the affected citizens, has brought in their mercenary paramilitary troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to quell the outraged residents of flood-hit areas.

The authorities had also warned citizens that they could be prosecuted for their online postings about the devastation