Tehran releases British-Iranian political prisoner after 550 days

British-Iranian woman Nasrin Roshan was released from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison on Tuesday, 550 days after being arrested for participating in protest gatherings abroad, Iran International has learned.

Roshan was arrested by security forces at Imam Khomeini International Airport on November 19, 2023, while attempting to legally travel from Tehran to her country of residence, the United Kingdom.

She was then taken to a solitary cell in the Intelligence Ministry's detention center known as Ward 209 of Evin Prison. Section 209 of Evin Prison, reportedly the most dreadful ward of the detention facility, is one of three prison sections that are controlled by Iran’s intelligence ministry.

Sara Tabrizian, a former political prisoner who died mysteriously after being released from prison, was arrested with her. She had been summoned to the Intelligence Ministry just one day before her death.

On January 1, 2024, after about a month and a half of torture and interrogation, Roshan was transferred to the women's ward of Evin Prison, where she remained until her release.

Roshan was later tried by Judge Iman Afshari, head of Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, and sentenced to four years in prison on charges of "assembly and collusion" and eight months in prison on charges of "propaganda against the system."

Under Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, the four-year sentence was the maximum applicable punishment, which was later reduced to three years in prison.

A source familiar with her case told Iran International that her participation in Woman Life Freedom rallies outside Iran was one of the grounds cited by the court in issuing her sentence.

It is not Roshan’s first time inside the Islamic Republic’s prisons. Roshan, born in 1963, was imprisoned in Iran from September 1981 to September 1985, between the ages of 18 and 22.

She spent the first two months of her detention in the 1980s under interrogation and torture in Evin Prison, and the rest of her sentence in Qazal Hesar Prison in Karaj.

Iran has been accused of wrongfully detaining at least a dozen foreign and dual nationals on trumped up charges, effectively as hostages to extract concessions from Western governments. Most of them are held on spurious spying charges.