In a pre-emptive attack on independent student organizations the Islamic regime in Iran arrested dozens of politically active students prior to Student’s Day (December 7), practically a day of protest against the status quo during decades of student struggles. However, despite the said arrests, the students celebrated their day by holding protest actions in different forms on a national level. In the course of those actions more students were arrested. At present there are forty-odd student activists from various parts of the country held in detention in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, as well as in other known and unknown places.

The detained students have been subjected to torture and cruel treatment. The news of torture has gravely alarmed their families and the people at large. The trumped-up charges brought against the students have aggravated the widespread concerns for their lives. Among other things, the Ministry of Intelligence has released a communiqué with regards to the Leftist students claiming that “the troublemakers had already obtained slingshots, collected rocks, and made sonic hand grenades” or “the detainees were found in possession of a considerable amount of alcoholic beverages, immoral literature, heretical books, and leaflets with sacrilegious content.” Also, the state-run Raja-news website has published reports stating “following extensive nation-wide investigations of the universities, the core communist cell, with connections abroad (read: connections with opposition organizations abroad), has been discovered and arrested. The said communist cell plotted to raise riots at universities on December 7th through violent provocations, using incendiary devices such as Molotov cocktails and hand grenades … etc.”

The fake and fabricated nature of such reports is obvious to all. However, these are heavy accusations used by the regime throughout its 30-year-long existence to line up thousands of freedom-seeking people against its firing squads. Today, it resorts to the same accusations against the students. This has, naturally, caused grave worries for the lives of the detained students among their families and the people at large. We simply have to thwart this conspiracy of the regime and free the imprisoned students by means of our international solidarity.

There is presently a massive protest movement underway for the release of the students at family, university, and town levels in various parts of the country. However, what is needed for a powerful fight for their immediate and unconditional release, as well as the release of all other political prisoners in Iran, is an extended global solidarity. We, therefore, call upon all individuals, institutions and organizations defending human rights to join our international campaign for the release of the recently arrested students and all other political prisoners languishing in the dungeons of the Islamic regime in Iran.

It should also be noted here that besides the detained students a large number of labor activists – among whom the internationally well-known Mahmoud Salehi, Mansour Osaanlou and Ebraahim Madadi – as well as scores of women who have resisted the regime’s current wave of mass intimidation on the pretext implementing its Hijab and other Islamic codes are in jail too.
An immediate demand of the Iranian people is the unconditional release of the recently arrested students, as well as all other political prisoners. Lend them your extensive international support so that they can open the prison gates, release their political prisoners and take their just struggles against the barbaric Islamic regime one step further.

Please send your protest letters to:
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei

The Office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street
Shahid Keshvar Doust Street

Tehran, Iran

Email

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Presidency
Palestine Avenue
Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran, Iran

Email

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Office of the Head of the Judiciary

Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhouri

Tehran, Iran

Email

Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Iran
International Labour Solidarity Committee of the Worker-communist Party of Iran
Equal Rights Now; Organization for the Defense of Women’s Rights
International Federation of Iranian Refugees
International Committee against Execution
International Committee against Stoning
December 17, 2007

The latest list of detained students, and pictures of some of them
1- Milad Moyini (Mazandaran University) 2- Behrang Zandi (Mazandaran University) 3- Hamed Mohammadi (Mazandaran University) 4- Arash Pakzad (Mazandaran University) 5- Hasan Maarefi (Mazandaran University) 6- Anooshe Azadfar (Tehran University) 7- Ilnaz Jamshidi (Communications, Azad University, Central Tehran) 8- Mehdi Gerayloo (Geophysics, Tehran) 9- Nader Ehsani (Mazandaran University) 10-Sayid Habibi (ex-member of the Central Council of Advare Tahkime Vahdat) 11- Behrooz Karimi-zade (Tehran University) 12- Keyvan Amiri Elyasi (Masters, Industry, Sharif Technical University) 13- Nasim Soltan Beygi (Communications faculty, Allameh University) 14- Ali Salem (Masters of Polymers – Polytechnic University) 15- Mohsen Ghamin (Polytechnic University) 16- Roozbeh Saf-Shekan (Tehran University) 17- Roozbehan Amiri (Computer Science, Tehran University) 18-Yaser Pir Hayati (Shahed University) 19- Mahsa Mohebbi 20- Okhtay Hosseni (Azad University) 21- Sayid Agham Ali Khalili (Allameh University) 22- Behzad Bagheri (Tehran University) 23- Ali Kalayi 24- Amir Mehrzad 25- Hadi Salari (Rajaee University) 26- Farshid Farhadi Ahangaran (Rajaee University) 27- Amir Aghayi (Rajaee University) 28- Milad Omrani 29- Soroosh Hashempoor (Chamran University) and 30-Yoones Mirhossein (Student of Shiraz University) 31- Parsa Kermanjian (Kermanshah University) 32-Abed Tavanche 33- Reza Arab (Mazandaran University) 34- Sadra Pirhayaty(Shahed University) 35-Peyman Piran 36- Majid Ashrafnejad (Rajaee University) 37- Shovan Merikhi (Mazandaran University) 38- Sara Khademi (Mazandaran University) 39- Nima Nahvi (Mazandaran University) 40- Mohammad Saleh Ayuman (Tehran University) 41- Sohrab Karimi (Tehran University) 42- Farshad Dustipoor (Tehran University) 43- Javad Alizadeh (Tehran University)