Jailed cleric Vahid Heroabadi
An Iranian dissident cleric, who was sentenced to prison due to his anti-regime writings, has been transferred to Tehran's notorious Evin prison to serve his term.
Maryam Jafari Azarmani, wife of the jailed cleric Vahid Heroabadi said Tuesday on twitter that her husband has been taken to Evin Prison while he has one more case pending against him.
Posting content on social media, Vahid Heroabadi was tried in the summer of 2020 by the Special Court of the Clergy on charges of “spreading lies with the intention of disturbing public opinion and propaganda activities against the state.”
The cleric, who is reportedly grown at odds with the regime, was detained at the Bazargan border with Turkey on May 31.
He formerly worked as a cultural missionary at Tehran University. However, he continued to slam policies like mandatory hijab, internet filtering, the persecution of Baha’is, a religious minority, and wide-ranging censorship of public discourse.
Once he wrote about the Baha’i community, “We can have two approaches. Killing the Baha'is, or [accepting] that they are our compatriots, Iranians, with social rights…. In the end it will be one of these two, and I will definitely be choosing the second one.”
After being dismissed from the university in 2018, he started selling small items in downtown Tehran while his photos dressed in his religious robes went viral.