At noon on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, Iranian regime authorities in Evin Prison — including Fathollahpour, head of security for Ward 4 of Evin Prison; Ahmadvand, the shift officer; and Asadi, a guard officer and the nephew of Hedayat Farzadi, the warden of Evin Prison — attacked political prisoner Ali Younesi, the elite student of Sharif University of Technology, while he was working in the ward’s cooking area (where prisoners prepare and heat their food). They beat him severely as he shouted in protest, dragged him out of the ward, and transferred him to an unknown location.
To prevent any protest by inmates over Ali’s forced transfer, the prison guards had preemptively stationed themselves at various points within Ward 4, cleared those areas of prisoners, and forcibly confined them to their rooms.
Ali, 25 years old, was arrested in Tehran on April 10, 2020, and sentenced, along with fellow elite student Amir Hossein Moradi, to 16 years in prison. In 2018, he won a gold medal at the 12th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics held in China. Prior to that, he had won silver and gold medals in the Iranian National Astronomy Olympiad.
Mir Yousef Younesi, Ali’s 70-year-old father, has been imprisoned since December 2022. He had previously spent three years in the Shah’s prisons and nine years during the 1980s for supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). In May 2025, while returning from a visitation with Ali, he was violently transferred by prison guards to Ward 7.
The Iranian Resistance calls for urgent action by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Special Rapporteur to safeguard Ali Younesi’s life and to ensure the release of all political prisoners.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
19 June 2025