At least eight Kurdish civilians and civil rights activists from Gilan-e-Gharb, Kermanshah Province, have been arrested by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in recent weeks, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.

The detainees, identified as Mohsen Esfandiari-Tabar, Arash Olfati, Maria Khani, Jahangir Azadi, Lotfollah Parviz, Hamidreza Rahimian, Salman Parhan, and Mostafa Rostami, were arrested in various locations including Tehran, Hamedan, and Gilan-e-Gharb. They were then transferred to an IRGC-run detention facility in Kermanshah.

Speaking to KHRN, a source familiar with the situation said: “In recent months, following the celebration of this year’s Newroz in Gilan-e-Gharb, pressure from the IRGC Intelligence Organisation on activists in the city has increased. As part of this pressure, several civilians and civil rights activists from Gilan-e-Gharb have been arrested in recent weeks in a fabricated security scenario.”

Esfandiari-Tabar, an army officer originally from Gilan-e-Gharb but living in Tehran, was arrested at his family home in Tehran on 29 July and taken to the IRGC Intelligence detention centre in Kermanshah.

On 13 August, IRGC forces raided the homes of Khani, Azadi, Parviz, Rahimian, Parhan and Rostami in Gilan-e-Gharb and arrested them without warrants.

Olfati, a civil rights activist based in Hamedan Province, was also arrested on 15 August.

All eight have been transferred to the IRGC’s detention facility at Nabi Akram military base in Kermanshah, where they have been denied access to their families and legal counsel.

Commenting on the matter to state media on 15 August, Kermanshah’s Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor, Hamidreza Karimi, said: “For some time now, two channels on the social networks Instagram and Telegram have been operating in one of the western cities of the province with the aim of dividing people. In view of the activities of these two channels, security and intelligence forces have taken action under a court order to identify the administrators of these channels”.

In response to the arrests, a group of civil rights and political activists from Kermanshah issued a statement condemning the arrests and calling for the immediate release of the activists.

The statement said: “Over the past few days, we have witnessed the arrest of several civil rights and environmental activists in Gilan-e-Gharb; individuals who are considered to be committed and leading members of the ‘Nejat-e Zagros’ (Saving Zagros) campaign. Despite the passage of many days since these arrests, the families and relatives of the detainees remain unaware of their physical condition and fate, and repeated follow-ups with the security agencies have so far been fruitless. We, a group of civil rights and political activists in Kermanshah, declare through this statement that, given the long history of fabrications and false security scenarios against civil rights and political activists, we strongly warn against any fabrications and creating divisions and sowing discord in the region.”