State pressure stepped up on Iran's Mourning Mothers

The Mourning Mothers

The Mourning Mothers, a support group of mothers and relatives of state violence victims in Iran, issued a statement to report the increasing state pressure on their members.

The announcement reports that two of their members, Akram Neqabi and Jila Taramsi have been arrested along with their daughters.

The report adds that Akram Neqabi is the mother of Saeed Zinali, a young man who was kidnapped from his home over ten years ago by Iranian security forces and remains missing despite all efforts to locate him.

Jila Taramsi is the mother of Hessam Taramsi, a 19-year-old post-election detainee who was recently released from prison and is suffering from a number of aliments.

The two mothers were arrested along with their daughters by the authorities five days ago. Officials have also confiscated their passports, money, computers, books and other personal items.

Iranian authorities have accused the detainees of links to dissident groups outside Iran.

Iranian media have written: “Once it became evident that these four individuals, from a group that calls itself “the Mourning Mothers” and is led by Rahanvard, were connected with the Monafeqin terrorist group, they were arrested in the process of travelling to Germany to get in touch with their main intermediary.”

The Mourning Mothers state that the daughters of Taramsi and Neqabi were travelling to Germany to pursue their education and they are not involved in any political activities.

The announcement also indicates that their group is in no way connected to the People’s Mojahedin Organization, which the establishment refers to as “monafeqin”, and it adds: “With all respect to Mrs. Zahra Rahnavard, we have never had any connection with her. Our group is a popular and spontaneous gathering that has worked towards reducing violence in our society.”

Zahra Rahanvard, is the wife of MirHosein Mousavi, the opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections. The couple have disputed the victory of Ahmadinejad and challenged the legitimacy and competence of his government over the past year.

The Mourning Mothers stress that the charges against them are in complete contradiction to the peaceful nature of their activities.

In the meantime, Kaleme website reports that the security and judicial branches of the government have begun a “new phase of pressures” on families of political prisoners.

The families are being threatened with arrest if they agree to media interviews and several of them are currently facing prosecution for defending their detained kin and releasing information about them to the media.