The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organization League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI) condemn the apparent arbitrary detention of four civil society members, including two women, and call for their immediate and unconditional release.
Paris, 6 November 2025. On 3 November 2025, law enforcement agents detained four scholars and confiscated their electronic equipment. The four are: Mr. Parviz Sedaghat, economist, author, and translator of several books and numerous articles and co-founder and chief editor of the online scholarly journal Critique of Political Economy (CPE); Mses. Shirin Karimi and Mahsa Assadollahnejad, writers and translators of articles on feminism and other social topics, including several published by CPE; and Mr. Mohammad Maljoo, economist and co-founder of CPE, writer, and translator of several books, and numerous articles. His latest article shared through his Telegram channel discussed the issues concerning the succession to the aging leader Ali Khamenei.
No information is available on the reasons for the deprivation of liberty or the current whereabouts of the four.
In addition, an unspecified number of other individuals were summoned, interrogated, and released. They include Messrs. Rassul Ghanbari and Himan Rahimi, whose writings and translations had been published by CPE.
CPE was founded in September 2012 and has regularly published articles from writers and translators, living in Iran and abroad, on various issues including feminism, poverty, the environment, Marxism, and social democracy.
FIDH and LDDHI call on United Nations (UN) special procedures, including the Special Rapporteur on situation of human rights in Iran, and the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, to pressure the Iranian authorities to respect the right to freedom of opinion and expression of all individuals in Iran and to end the ongoing crackdown on civil society.