Last Update
Unknown
Organisation
Unknown
Gender
Male
Ethnic Group
Unknown
Religoius Group
Muslim
Province
Tehran
Occupation
Civil society activist
Sentence
Unknown
Status
Released
Institution investigating
IRGC Intelligence
Charges
Conspiring against national security
Propaganda against the regime
Ehsan Akbari, a journalist and civil rights activist, was arrested in January 2015. He was later released on bail and he left the country.
Akbari worked on the election campaigns headquarters of Mohamad Reza Aref and the 2009 presidential candidate Mir-Houssein Mousavi. He was arrested at his place of work by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on January 13, 2015, and transferred to Unit 2A of Evin Prison which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. After three months of detention he was released from prison on bail.
Akbari left Iran in 2017. His court case had not yet been heard.
After his release Ehsan Akbari gave an interview with Journalism is Not a Crime. In a statement after his detention in Unit 2A of Evin Prison, Akbari said that “I spent three months in Unit 2A of Evin Prison under arrest and interrogation and after paying my bail of 200 million tomans, I was released.”
In 2015, he spoke about the accusations made against him, saying, “Seven different charges were filed against me. Gathering and colluding against the state, propaganda against the state, libel … are among the accusations against me. Eventually, in 2017 with the possibility that I’d be arrested and imprisoned once again, I decided to leave the country.”