Husband and wife Houman Jokar and Sepideh Kashani were taken into custody by Iran’s ministry of intelligence at their residence on 1 July. The authorities have not disclosed any reason for the detentions, and the individuals’ current location remains unknown. Their sister, Sima Kashani, was also arrested on the same date.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds dual Iranian and British citizenship and spent six years imprisoned in Iran between 2016 and 2022, publicly responded to the arrests with concern. During her own incarceration, she encountered Kashani at Evin prison. Zaghari-Ratcliffe noted that Kashani had previously endured two years in solitary confinement and expressed worry about her psychological state given the prospect of reincarceration. She described Kashani as apolitical and uninvolved in activism, while characterizing Jokar as a dedicated conservationist whose expertise centered on protecting critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs in Iran.
Jokar and Kashani previously worked for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, an organization focused on cheetah conservation. They were among several environmentalists detained in 2018 and subsequently convicted on accusations of using wildlife monitoring equipment for espionage purposes. International scientific bodies widely disputed these charges, and even officials within Iran’s own environmental ministry and intelligence service publicly stated that the environmentalists were not spies and had committed no wrongdoing.
The current detentions represent part of a broader escalation in Iran’s treatment of civil society actors and political dissidents. Amnesty International reported that over 6,000 individuals have been detained following the commencement of military conflict between the United States and Israel with Iran. Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American who spent eight years in Iranian custody and previously shared a cell with Jokar, characterized the latest arrests as contradictory to stated governmental reconciliation efforts and referenced the 2018 convictions as a significant miscarriage of justice.