Mansour Ossanloo, the president of the Iranian independent bus workers’ union was kidnapped by plain clothes police on Tuesday 10 July and taken to the notorious Evin prison.
Ossanloo was stopped while he was returning home by a public transit bus in Tehran. According to Iranian workers’ sources, a Peugeot car stopped the bus and unidentified plain clothes agents attacked him - beating him severely while telling people that he was a thief! Ossanloo tried to identify himself as the president of the union for the witnesses in order to get help but the agents stopped him.
Security forces tried to arrest Ossanlou in similar circumstances in May. Then, Ossanloo freed himself because people rushed to help. But this time the agents did not give him any chance.
Last November Ossanloo kidnapped and incarcerated in Evin prison. After enduring a month of detention, he was released. Before that, Ossanloo was imprisoned from December 2005 for eight months. Earlier this year a Tehran revolutionary Court issued a prison sentence of five years against Ossanloo, but his lawyer had filed an appeal and his case was in process.
A few days before Ossanlou’s kidnapping, Ebrahim Madadi, the union’s vice president, was arrested by uniformed police officers but freed a day after without charges following union protest.
This is part of a new wave of suppression in Iran against labour activists as well as women’s rights activists and students. At thee time armed security forces attacked protesting students at Amir Kabir University in Tehran and arrested six students. Worker activist Mahmoud Salehi has been jailed since April this year and has been deliberately denied life-saving medical treatment by the authorities.
Messages of protest can be sent via Labour Start
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