Iran International
A German-based humanitarian worker has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran after entering the country to help vulnerable Iranians, in a case rights experts say is the latest example of Tehran using foreign detainees as political leverage.
A German-based humanitarian worker has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran after entering the country to help vulnerable Iranians, Stuttgart-based aid organization STELP said.
Serkan Eren, the 42-year-old founder of STELP, was convicted over alleged contacts with a country Iran considers hostile, according to the organization. STELP has not identified the country or disclosed further details, citing concerns for Eren and others involved.
Eren, a Turkish citizen and longtime resident of Germany, has been in Iranian custody for more than a year.
He entered Iran in late June 2025 as the 12-day war was drawing to a close. Five days later, after a ceasefire had taken effect, he headed toward the Iraqi border to leave the country. He never made it out.
STELP called the verdict unjustified and said the sentence did not reflect the circumstances of his case.
“The ten-year prison sentence given to Serkan Eren is not about what he has done. It is about what the Islamic Republic wants,” Shahin Milani, executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, told Iran International.
Milani said Eren's charitable work offered little protection from what he described as Tehran's established practice of using foreign detainees as political leverage.
“Even working for a charitable organization does not protect foreign nationals,” he said.
Contemporaneous German reporting provides a detailed account of why Eren went to Iran and the precautions he took before entering.
German-Iranians had approached STELP seeking help for relatives inside the country, according to the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Eren said he was in contact with seven elderly Iranians, some of them ill, whom he hoped to help reach Turkey. He also intended to bring food into Tehran.
The risks were apparent before he crossed the border.
Eren deliberately left behind a satellite phone, bulletproof vest and helmet, fearing such equipment could cause Iranian authorities to mistake him for an agent or saboteur. Instead, he crossed from Turkey into Iran on foot with little more than a backpack.
Once inside, those concerns intensified. Eren later described armed checkpoints on his route to Tehran where he was forced to strip naked during searches.
More than a year later, an Islamic Republic court convicted him over alleged contacts with a hostile country.
Human rights lawyer Gissou Nia said humanitarian status has not historically insulated either foreign aid workers or Iranian charities from pressure by the authorities.
“Unfortunately, being a humanitarian aid worker is not a shield when it comes to the Islamic Republic detaining and arbitrarily imprisoning individuals,” Nia told Iran International.
She cited the case of Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecasteele, who was detained in Iran in 2022 and later sentenced to a lengthy prison term before being released in 2023 in a prisoner exchange involving Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat imprisoned in Belgium over a foiled bomb plot.
“This is a pattern that we've seen before,” Nia said.
Nia also pointed to the treatment of humanitarian organizations operating inside Iran. The Imam Ali Popular Students Relief Society, a prominent independent charity that worked with impoverished families and vulnerable children, was dissolved following years of pressure from Iranian authorities.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported in 2022 that an appeals court upheld an order dissolving the organization after authorities arrested several of its members and accused its founder of offenses including insulting Iran's leadership and acting against national security.
The case, Nia said, illustrates how work designed to remain outside politics can itself become politically charged in Iran.
“Even the sort of non-politicized work of humanitarian aid organizations has been politicized in some ways,” she said.
Eren's Turkish citizenship adds another layer to efforts to secure his release.
Despite living in Germany and running a Stuttgart-based organization, Eren does not hold German citizenship. Germany's Foreign Office has said it is aware of his case but that responsibility rests with Turkish authorities because he is a Turkish national. STELP says it has been working closely with Ankara since his detention.
Nia said his ties to Germany nevertheless give Berlin reason to remain engaged.
“I anticipate that Germany will raise the case, especially because he was working for a German-based organization,” she said. “And the Turkish government will probably be involved as well, because he is a Turkish citizen.”
The sentence has already drawn calls for Eren's release in Germany. Baden-Württemberg Minister-President Cem Özdemir said he would continue pushing for Eren to be freed immediately.
Eren has spent years working in humanitarian crises. He began aid work during Europe's 2015 refugee crisis and received Germany's Federal Order of Merit in 2023 for his humanitarian service.
Before entering Iran, he openly questioned whether authorities would allow him into the country at all.
“It’s arbitrary,” Eren told the Stuttgarter Zeitung at the time.
He nevertheless hoped his status as a humanitarian worker would help protect him.
It did not.
The letter, published by Iranian media on Tuesday in English and Persian, presents the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a force for the people, portrays Iran as victorious and the United States as a power in decline, and returns repeatedly to a single instruction: that Americans turn against the politicians they elected.
The Guards and their Basij volunteer force led the suppression of nationwide protests in January, in which security forces killed tens of thousands of people in two days. A UN fact-finding mission said this month that the crackdown involved crimes against humanity.
Signs of 'decline'
"Tyranny, an excessive tendency to behave violently and murderously, relying on and promoting falsehoods, giving precedence to the vulgar elements of society over the wiser elements in occupying positions of power, and an inordinate preoccupation with inessential matters at the expense of society's essential affairs" are the signs of a state in decline, the letter says.
"The United States government today exemplifies all of these flaws."
'Not a single verifiable instance'
The United States designates the Guards as a foreign terrorist organization. The letter rejects the label.
"There is not a single verifiable instance where the IRGC has committed an act of violence against civilians," it says. "In fact, it would not be an overstatement to assert that the Guards are the world's most effective organization in combating terrorism."
Amnesty International said this month that Iranian authorities carried out a systematic campaign of killings, torture and sexual violence to crush the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022. It named 87 officials, including senior Guards and police commanders, whom it said should be investigated for crimes against humanity, and documented 377 protest-related deaths, 56 of them children.
The UN fact-finding mission's report on the January 2026 crackdown cited unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, and said the scale of the violence was a sharp escalation from earlier repression.
The Guards' Quds Force arms and funds Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq. Since the war began in February, Guards naval forces have attacked commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
'Take back control'
The letter tells Americans they are responsible for their government.
"You are the ones who empower, with your votes, the government and allow it to do what it does," it says. "Although American politicians often win your votes through deception and false promises, as Trump did, you can change the makeup of the government."
"The United States of America is a great nation," it adds. "To allow vulgar and immoral individuals to continue steering your politics and policies will only further humiliate and undermine the US. Take back control."
In Iran, candidates for president and parliament are vetted by the Guardian Council, an unelected body, before they can stand. The supreme leader is not elected by voters. Official turnout in the 2024 presidential election was about 40 percent.
The letter also explains the slogan "Death to America." "The true meaning of 'Death to America' is 'Death to the crimes perpetrated by the American elite,'" it says. "It is, in a word, not an expression of ill will toward the American people."
The slogan is chanted at state-organized rallies and Friday prayers across Iran and appears on murals maintained by the state in central Tehran, including on the walls of the former US embassy.
'The dam will break'
The letter attacks Donald Trump and tells Americans their economy is failing.
"The US economy is on the precipice of collapse, and yet he keeps on telling Americans that the economy is booming and the prices will soon start coming down," it says. "This is, perhaps, his biggest lie. Soon, the dam will break, and the economy will implode, causing, unfortunately, great pain for Americans for many many years."
"The US economy will be hit by a massive economic earthquake that will affect the lives of all Americans," it adds. "You, the American people, have the power to forestall this grim fate."
On the day the letter circulated, the dollar traded above 2.5 million rials on Iran's open market. Iran's minimum monthly wage of 166 million rials is worth about $66 at that rate.
'We can live together'
The letter closes by asking Americans to press Washington to distance itself from Israel.
"We can live together in peaceful coexistence," it says. "Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America's current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed."
The accounts from Dastgerd Prison in the central city of Isfahan describe crowded wards, poor sanitation and severe obstacles to treatment, with several people familiar with conditions there describing the spread of meningitis and other infections.
“Meningitis and colds are rampant in the prison, and there are no pills or medicine,” a former prisoner told Iran International.
Around 10,000 people are being held at Dastgerd, compared with a standard capacity of about 4,000 to 5,000, according to information.
Food shortages compound overcrowding
Nutrition is so poor that many prisoners have become physically weak and more vulnerable to illness.
Breakfast is not distributed on some days, and lunch and dinner are rationed. Food can also be difficult to obtain from the prison shop, even as cigarettes remain consistently available and various drugs are easily accessible inside.
Some wards hold between 1,300 and 1,500 prisoners, another person familiar with conditions at Dastgerd said. The combination of overcrowding and inadequate sanitation has helped diseases spread.
Prisoners, particularly political ones, in some cases deprived of phone calls, treatment, medicine, adequate food, sanitation, correspondence and some judicial rights.
Iran International reported on July 21 that prisoners must register to visit the medical center. In rooms housing around 40 people, only two are allowed to seek medical attention each week.
Meningitis spreads as prisoner deaths mount
Several accounts received in recent months point to the spread of meningitis at Dastgerd. Iran International previously reported that the disease had reached several wards and that a number of prisoners were transferred to hospital.
Two prisoners had meningitis when one former inmate arrived at Dastgerd. One suffered a seizure in the admissions section and died, while the other died after being transferred to hospital.
The former inmate said prisoners had in previous years received meningitis and tetanus vaccines upon arrival, but the vaccinations were no longer being administered during the person's recent detention.
More than 70 prisoners have died from illnesses over roughly the past five months, according to another person familiar with conditions at the prison. At least 15 of those who had died by September 21 were from a single ward.
Prisoners suspected of having meningitis have in some cases been sent to hospitals for spinal fluid testing. Some were returned to Dastgerd before completing treatment and recovering.
The prison is also infested with bedbugs and other pests, according to accounts. Recent Iran International coverage documented bedbugs, fleas and ticks alongside increasing skin conditions and infections in the wards.
Blankets and bedding are heavily contaminated, one former prisoner said, with some inmates developing serious eye infections that leave them unable to open their eyes in the morning.
The person needed nearly two months of treatment after being released on bail, including regular injections and intravenous fluids during the first two weeks.
Fever, chills, body aches and infections of the lungs, throat, eyes and ears were widespread. Some prisoners contracted several illnesses at once, leaving them severely weakened.
Medicine shortages restrict treatment
Severe medicine shortages have compounded the health problems, while political prisoners can face particular difficulties gaining access to the prison clinic.
Denial of treatment has in some cases been used to exert pressure on political prisoners, according to one former inmate.
Prison authorities told inmates that the clinic had burned down, that medicine was unavailable and that there was no budget to buy supplies.
One prisoner offered to deposit 500 million rials into a prison account to pay for medicine. The offer was accepted, but most of the supplies subsequently purchased were acetaminophen and basic cold remedies, with insufficient antibiotics available for serious infections.
Families have also tried to bring necessary medication into the prison, only for authorities in some cases to refuse delivery or confiscate part of the medicine during inspections.
Sedatives, sleeping pills and drugs, by contrast, are widely available among prisoners, according to the former inmate.
