Oshnavieh: Sediq Eini's father summoned over his son's political activity abroad

In recent days the intelligence office of Oshnavieh county has summoned and interrogated Khalil Eini, father of Sediq Eini, a political activist and former political prisoner living abroad, several times. The interrogators told him that his son must stop his activity on social media against the Islamic Republic, or his family in Iran will pay a "price" for it.

According to human rights sources, the summonses were accompanied by hours of insulting treatment of the father. The aim, according to the same sources, is to silence a critic who is beyond the reach of the Islamic Republic's security forces outside Iran.

The case of Sediq Eini

Sediq Eini was first arrested on 12 August 2017 and taken to Urmia prison. In January–February 2018, the Revolutionary Court sentenced him on a charge of "espionage" to 10 years in prison and exile to Ardabil prison. On 20 July 2021 he was released on leave after posting bail of two billion toman, and later left Iran.

Hostage-taking of families as a tool of transnational repression

Pressure on the families of activists living abroad is a well-known method in the Islamic Republic's record. The US State Department regards this conduct as "transnational repression" and, in its human rights report, lists the punishment of people for the activities of their relatives among Iran's serious human rights violations. Alongside assassination and espionage plots in Europe, this method is part of the same policy of silencing critics anywhere in the world.

At the same time, pressure on the families of those killed in the 2022 uprising continues. Farhad Maroufi, father of Farzin Maroufi, a 19-year-old from Mahabad who was killed by shots from security agents on the night of 29 November 2022 during street celebrations after the Iran–US World Cup match, has been hospitalised in poor physical condition; the legal body Dadban attributes his state to the psychological pressure. In these same days, Babak Moradifar, a political activist, was summoned to serve a 30-month prison sentence.

To silence critics abroad, the Islamic Republic drags their fathers in small Iranian towns into the intelligence office.