Farshteh Tabanian, a defense attorney, announced on Sunday, February 15, 2026, on the social platform X that her client, Mehran Gharebaghi, a 33-year-old political prisoner, was secretly transferred about twenty days earlier (early December 2025) from Sheiban Prison in Ahvaz to an undisclosed location.
Since then, no information has been available regarding his condition, place of detention, or even the authority responsible for the transfer.
The move, carried out without notifying his lawyer, family, or any official registration, recalls a recurring pattern of enforced disappearance of political prisoners — a method repeatedly used to exert torture, psychological pressure, and fabricate new charges.
Gharebaghi, a native of Tileh-Kouhi village near Behbahan, was arrested on January 18, 2020, by intelligence forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Behbahan. After being held in Behbahan Prison, he was transferred to Sheiban Prison in Ahvaz in early December 2021.
During more than seven years of imprisonment, he has developed serious heart conditions, visual impairment, scabies, and other skin diseases caused by the prison’s unsanitary conditions.
National oppression in Iran against ethnic minorities — including Kurds, Baluch, Arabs, Turks, and Turkmen — manifests through a combination of political, economic, cultural, and linguistic restrictions. Many of these communities face discrimination in access to state resources, employment opportunities, education in their mother tongue, and meaningful participation in power structures, while their regions often lag behind the national average in infrastructure, investment, and public services.
Harsher security crackdowns, restrictions on cultural and civic activities, and limited political representation have further deepened feelings of marginalization and inequality among these populations.
As a result, national oppression is viewed not only as a human rights issue but also as a key factor in social divisions, distrust toward governing institutions, and the persistence of deprivation cycles in peripheral regions of the country.
