Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
Iran Human Rights (IHR)- Branch 54 of the Tehran Court of Appeals has upheld a six-year prison sentence for Soha Mortezaei, a doctoral candidate banned from education and former Secretary of the Central Student Council of the University of Tehran, who was arrested as part of the nationwide November 2019 protests.
Soha Mortezaei was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “assembly and collusion in order to disrupt national security” by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Salavati, on 9 November 2020. The Court of Appeals has now upheld the six year prison term for the student.
On January 9, her lawyer, Mostafa Nili confirmed the news on his Twitter page and wrote: “Her sit-in at the university to protest being denied her doctoral degree was cited as the main example of the charges.”
Despite ranking tenth in the national doctoral entrance exam in political science in 2019, her application was marked with “defected file” on the orders of the Ministry of Intelligence and she was effectively banned from continuing her higher education.
She began a 19-day sit-in at the end of October 2019 to protest her education ban and “star” status (a term used for students who have stars next to their names, marking that they had either been banned from education or that they had been registered under special circumstances). For 19 days, she sat alone on campus with a placard, on which she had written her demands and issues created for her by the Ministry of Intelligence.
In interviews with domestic media, she stated that after complaining to the Admissions Organisation, she was shown two letters by officials, one from the Ministry of Intelligence and the other from the University of Tehran Security, both requesting that the Admissions Organisation not admit her to the doctoral program.
As the November 2019 protests spread, Soha was beaten and arrested by security forces on the evening of Sunday, 19 November 2019 in the University of Tehran female dormitories.
According to reports by the National Student Union’s Telegram channel, Esmail Soleimani, head of the University of Tehran Security and the university’s Vice-Chancellor for Culture, Majid Sarsangi, were directly involved in her arrest and had on at least one occasion threatened Soha’s mother that if she did not stop her daughter’s protest, she would be arrested and sentenced to a further two and a half years in prison.
During Soha’s sit-in, Esmail Soleimani had also asked her mother to sign a letter requesting that her daughter be transferred to a “mental hospital” with the co-operation of the University of Tehran, in order to receive “electric shocks” to make her “stop what she’s doing.”
Following her arrest, Soha was deprived of the right to have access to a lawyer and contact with her family. On 27 December 2019, she went on a hunger strike for more than two weeks to protest the dire conditions in prison and being unable to pay the set bail amount.
She was finally released from Qarchak Prison on a bail of 500 million Tomans on 22 January 2020.
Soha Mortezaei was previously arrested by security forces during the December 2017 nationwide protests for her student activism and sentenced to six years in prison and a two-year ban from membership in political and social groups and parties, by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in September 2018. The sentence was reduced to one year in prison on appeal.
