Arsalan Borna is a journalist from Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province. In 2018, Borna was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for supporting calls for a referendum on Kurdish independence and for publishing articles in support of women’s rights.

On February 23, 2018, Borna was summoned to the local Mahabad division of the Ministry of Intelligence and was then arrested.

Borna was kept in temporary detention for five days, after which he was released on bail for 20 million tomans until the end of the legal proceedings against him.

In May 2018, the Revolutionary Courts of Mahabad sentenced Borna to a year in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state.” The court cited articles that he had written on a variety of subjects, such as his support for a referendum on Kurdish independence, as well as his support for women’s rights, as evidence to support the charge.

On September 18, 2018, the Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict in Borna’s case in its entirety. 

Arsalan Borna was transferred to Mahabad Prison to serve his prison sentence on September 25, 2018.

According to a tweet published by Ejlal Ghavami, a journalist and human rights activist, Borna was released from prison on February 18, 2019, after serving approximately five months of his prison sentence.

Prior to his arrest in 2018, Arsalan Borna had previously been summoned to the local Mahabad division of the Ministry of Intelligence for questioning and interrogation on a number of occasions in connection to articles that he had written and published.