DUBAI (Reuters) – An Iranian Revolutionary Court has sentenced two dual nationals, a German-Iranian woman and a British-Iranian man, to over 10 years in prison each on national security charges, their lawyer said on Wednesday.
“Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Ms. #Nahid_Taghavi and Mr. #Mehran_Raouf to 10 years in prison for participating in the management of an illegal group and to eight months in prison for propaganda activities against the regime,” lawyer Mostafa Nili said in a Twitter post.
Iran’s judiciary had yet to report the sentences. But Taghavi’s daughter Mariam Claren tweeted a confirmation of her sentence.
Taghavi, 66, a human rights activist who lives in Germany but retained an apartment in Tehran, was arrested there in October 2020 while on a visit to her homeland and her trial began on April 28, according to Claren and human rights groups.
“My mother was allowed to see her brothers. They hugged her. Her first hug after almost 7 months,” Claren tweeted on April 28.
Raouf, a labour rights activist, was arrested in Iran on Oct. 16 last year by the elite Revolutionary Guards, according to Amnesty International.
Amnesty said in February that Raouf was being held in “prolonged solitary confinement, in violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment”.
The Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners in recent years, mostly on espionage and security-related charges.
Rights activists have accused the Islamic Republic of trying to win concessions from other countries through such arrests. Tehran, which does not recognise dual nationality, denies holding holds people for political reasons.
Iran and six world powers including Germany and Britain are in talks to revive their 2015 nuclear deal, which unravelled in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States and imposed sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.
The talks have been stalled since June 20 with both sides saying major gaps remain to be resolved.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
