Shehnaz Khosravi, the mother of political prisoner Bijan Kazemi — who is being held in the Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Qom — announced on her Instagram on Monday, 22 September Shahrivar, that her son has been on a hunger strike since Thursday in protest against the harsh treatment by intelligence officers. According to her statement, Kazemi continues to be held in this detention facility despite the law, which stipulates that detainees should be placed under the authority of the Prisons Organization and be held in the jurisdiction of their place of residence or the place where the alleged crime occurred.
This political activist has reportedly been held for months in an unofficial detention facility, without the right to family visits and without access to a lawyer. Khosravi emphasized that neither she nor her son’s attorney have been informed of the charges allegedly brought against him, and that his situation remains shrouded in complete uncertainty.
Bijan Kazemi, a Kurdish citizen from Kuhdasht in Lorestan province, had previously been convicted in 2020 of “propaganda against the regime” and served part of that sentence. He was rearrested in Dey 2024 (December) following the killings of two well-known judges and has since been held in legal limbo. Some reports claim he has been pressured intensively to provide “confessions” about “providing weapons” or links to the assassinations — allegations his family and human-rights sources deny and describe as deeply troubling.
Since his arrest, relatives and human-rights monitors say Kazemi has been repeatedly transferred between detention centers, kept in prolonged solitary confinement, and denied family access. Although judicial authorities set a bail amount and the family has posted it, the judiciary has thus far prevented his release. Independent human-rights organizations have warned about the opaque nature of his case, the risk of torture or coercion to obtain confessions, and repeated violations of legal procedure, and they have called for transparency and judicial access.
