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Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Two months after the arrest of Sharmin Meymandinejad, the founder of the Imam Ali Popular-Student Relief Society (Imam Ali Society), the Ministry of Interior has set a 20-day deadline for the NGO to change its structure.
A hundred civil society activists recently issued a statement protesting the “deterrent and narrow-minded treatment of NGOs” and called for the release of Sharmin Meymandinejad, the jailed founder of Imam Ali Society, and other imprisoned civil society activists.
In part, the statement referred to the “unjustified insistence on changing the statute of the Imam Ali Society and its organisational structure from the Board of Trustees to the General Assembly, weakening and rendering it ineffective.”
Saeed Dehghan, the NGO’s lawyer, tweeted: “The simultaneous arrest of the members of the society and the deadline set by the Ministry of Interior to change its structure, that is, to choose between brain death and real death!”
In an interview with Emtedad, the lawyer said: “Overall, their demands should be evaluated by considering the simultaneous arrest of the founder and members of the board of directors, the order to formally change the Society’s structure through a letter from the deputy interior minister for social participations which set a 20-day deadline. In discussing the charges, Sharmin Meymandinejad has been accused of blasphemy, which may not have anything to do with the Society, but if what we are hearing is true and he has been accused of ‘assembly and collusion’ then one can assume that it is related to the Society, otherwise the question would be, who did they assemble and collude with? Now, exactly with whom did the founder of Imam Ali Society assemble and collude? With its members? With the organisation that he founded himself? These are some of the inconsistencies with the current general information. However, there is a deep gap between the policies being declared and the policies being implemented. Regarding the letter from the Ministry of Interior setting the deadline for changing the structure, one should ask why now? Why you? Given that the founder of the Society is still in custody without access to an independent lawyer and at the same time, fragmented and partial information from their hard disks, laptops and mobile phones are being published, what is the purpose of the deputy interior minister setting a deadline to change the structure of the society?”
Sharmin Meymandinejad and two other members of the Imam Ali Society, Morteza Keymanesh and Katayoun Afrazeh, were arrested separately at their homes on 21 June 2020. They were released on bail a month later, but Sharmin Meymandinejad remains in custody without access to a lawyer or any official charges being laid.
The Imam Ali Popular-Student Relief Society is one of the most well-known charities in Iran, which works on a host of issues including poverty, education, healthcare and employment. One of the most important areas of their work is supporting youth affected by crime, especially those sentenced to death, who were under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged crime.
