Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
RFL/RE – A university law student who has been a supporter of Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement is still missing several days after her arrest by security forces, the second time she has been detained since unrest broke out over the death of a young woman in custody for an alleged violation of the head-scarf law.
Fahimeh Soltani, who studies at the University of Isfahan, was taken into custody after a raid on her home on April 6 and has not been heard from since, her family reported.
Security personnel, posing as postal workers, seized Soltani’s mobile phone and laptop during the arrest, the family said.
Soltani’s detention coincides with her previous arrest in November 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests following Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody.
After being held in detention for three months, Soltani was released as part of a broader pardon issued by the Islamic republic’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Soltani’s university activities have led to her being barred from studying for two terms due to cases she says were fabricated by the university’s security department. Despite appealing the disciplinary rulings against her, the school’s Central Committee delayed a final decision on her case.
On April 2, Soltani received a late-night call regarding the appeal and was told she had received an additional two-term study ban.
Amid efforts to expel her, the university in Isfahan, a city of some 2 million people about 400 kilometers south of Tehran, sent a direct expulsion request to the Central Committee. Along with her current arrest, her family said it remains in the dark about the outcome of the expulsion request.
Separately, a review committee at Tehran University has confirmed the suspension of Zahra Jafari, a graduate student in social welfare planning and editor of the student magazine Zhina.
Jafari was barred from studying for two semesters on charges including insulting Islamic and national symbols and acts against the Islamic republic. Her sentence, affecting her final thesis defense, began at the start of this academic year and will continue through the end of the second semester.
Universities and students have long been at the forefront of the struggle for greater social and political freedoms in Iran. In 1999, students protested the closure of a reformist daily newspaper, prompting a brutal raid on the dorms of Tehran University that left one student dead.
Over the years, the authorities have sent student activists and leaders to prison and banned them from studying.
The activist HRANA news agency says at least 700 university students have been arrested during the nationwide protests sparked by the September 2022 death of the 22-year-old Amini.
Many have faced sentences such as imprisonment and flogging, and dozens of students have been expelled from universities or suspended from their studies as security forces try to stifle widespread dissent.
