In Brief Status: Released In October 2019, Iranian authorities have released Hamid Babaei, 36, a PhD student at the University of Liege in Belgium, who was detained in August 2013 shortly after his return to Tehran and sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “communicating with hostile foreign governments and spying.” Throughout his incarceration, Babaei stated repeatedly that he was imprisoned for refusing to operate as an informant in Belgium for Iran’s Intelligenc

In Brief Yashar Darolshafa, a graduate student of Sociology at Tehran University and the former secretary of the Islamic Reformist Students' Association of Qazvin International University, was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” and “founding or leading an organization aimed to disrupt national security.” Case History First arrested in 2009, Darolshafa was given the prison sentence in August 2010 by Branch 15 of

In Brief Giulio Regeni, an Italian doctoral student at Cambridge who was studying abroad in Egypt, disappeared on his way to a party in Cairo. He was found dead by the roadside over a week later. Case History Regeni, 28, was last seen heading to a birthday party on January 25, 2016—the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising that ended the 30-year reign of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. When Regeni was found on February 3, he was so severely wounded that his mother

In Brief Nazimuddin Samad, a 28-year-old secular activist and law student at Jagannath University, was killed in Dhaka, Bangladeshi capital, on April 7, 2016. According to the BBC, Samad was attacked at a traffic jam by three men armed with machetes before being shot. Case History Samad was known to have been critical of state religion set in the Bangladeshi Constitution. He once said on Facebook, “Evolution is a scientific truth. Religion and race are [an] invention of the s

Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a group* of UN human rights experts warn that over a dozen political prisoners in Iran, including prominent human rights defenders, lawyers, and political activists, are at risk of death due to their worsening health conditions and the continued refusal by Iranian authorities to provide them with medical treatment. “The condition of several prisoners of conscience with s

Thousands of Sudanese students have entered their second day of protests following the death of a student in North Kordofan, central Sudan. Abubakar Hassan, 18, was killed on Monday at Kordofan University by a gunshot wound to the head after intelligence agents opened fire on students taking part in a peaceful march. The students were walking to the student union building to nominate proopposition candidates for their campus elections, said Amnesty International. A further 27

Iranian physicist Omid Kokabee, who has been imprisoned in Tehran since 2011, is suffering from life-threatening kidney cancer, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported Monday. Kokabee, 34, was arrested while visiting Iran from the United States, where he was studying physics at the University of Texas. He was charged with communicating with a hostile government and receiving illegitimate funds. His family has asked for his immediate release due to his sev

According to Amnesty International, student leaders Phyoe Phyoe Aung and Lin Htet Naing (aka James and Aung Thant Zin) were released on April 8 after all charges against them were dropped by courts in Myanmar. The releases follow the government's announcement on April 7 that it would work to free all prisoners of conscience at the first possible opportunity. Phyoe Phyoe Aung is the secretary general of the prominent All Burma Federation Student Union. Such unions are illegal