Outspoken Iranians overseas say their loved ones are being detained back home

A residential building damaged by recent U.S.-Israeli strikes is seen with a sign on its wall that reads in Farsi: “We stand till the end,” in Fardis, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) 2026-04-04T10:12:03Z CAIRO (AP) — Iran’s government is detaining family members and threatening to seize property of Iranian opposition figures in exile, some tell The Associated Press, in the latest crackdown on dissenting voices as the war rages on.

Activists overseas play a key role in tracking the crackdown, which is complicated by the internet shutdown imposed earlier this year during massive nationwide protests against the Islamic theocracy.

Watchdogs say security forces shot and killed thousands of people.

The war with the United States and Israel has intensified authorities’ threats against anyone speaking to outside media or activists.

Now that pressure appears to be expanding to intimidate activists in exile.

Iran ‘took my mother away to make me be quiet’ Intelligence agents in Tehran on March 15 detained the brother of Hossein Razzagh, a former political prisoner who fled last year to Europe, Razzagh told the AP. “My own brother isn’t at all political and doesn’t do any kind of political activity.

It’s to put me under pressure,” he said.

His brother, Ali, was taken from his home in Tehran and was able to phone his wife that night “for a few seconds” from a detention center run by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, Razzagh said.

Since then, the family and his lawyer have been unable to contact him.

But the intelligence ministry told them it was reviewing his contact with his brother, Razzagh said.

Another activist who fled, Behnam Chegini, said his 20-year-old niece was detained on March 10 for a week.

The niece was taken from her parents’ house in the city of Arak soon after she returned from Tehran, where her university had closed because of the war.

Read More She was later released on bail and put under a travel ban.

Chegini, who is now based in France, said the detention was at least in part “because she is my niece and they know that.” Sareh Sedighi, an activist who fled after her 2021 death sentence was overturned, said her mother was detained from her home last month in the western town of Urmia. “The Islamic Republic took my mother away to make me be quiet,” she said.

Her mother suffers from health problems and requires daily insulin doses, she added.

And Mahshid Nazemi, a former political prisoner and activist w

原文链接: AP News