Prominent# Iranian# human rights activist blocked# from leaving country#
Mansoureh Behkish in an undated photo
CTV News, October 15, 206 - Iran has once again targeted a prominent human rights activist, who lost six family members to state executions and killings in the 1980s. Mansoureh Behkish, who’s been jailed several times for her past advocacy work, had her passport confiscated indefinitely and without explanation by authorities. It happened as she was about to board a plane to Ireland, where her daughter lives.
A grave at Khavaran cemetery belonging to Mansoureh Behkish's sister, Zahra, who was arrested Aug. 25, 1983 in Tehran and killed the same day or the day after under torture
Behkish said security agents did not tell her why they stopped her from boarding and took her passport at Tehran International Airport on Sept. 16. She was told that in order to get her passport back she must report to Evin revolutionary tribunal court, located in the same complex as the notorious Evin Prison where she has several times been incarcerated for her human rights advocacy work. “It is possible that, during the interrogation, they might arrest me, or threaten me with a heavier sentence, which I would strongly protest,” Behkish wrote in an open letter. “I am aware that resisting injustice and oppression has a price, and I am prepared for it.” Behkish said she was looking forward to flying to Ireland to visit her daughter, especially as she was still dealing with the death of her own mother in January. “I have not [gotten] used to her absence yet,” she said of Nayereh Jalali Mohajer, who was known as “Mother Behkish.” Mohajer spent much of her life seeking justice for her five children and a son-in-law who were among the thousands of political prisoners executed in 1988 by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The state executions of Mother Behkish's children and son-in-law, by all known accounts, are the most suffered by a single family.
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