Human Rights Watch has independently confirmed that Payam Derafshan, a respected Iranian human-rights lawyer, has suffered a cruel level of torture at the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard while unjustly incarcerated in Evin Prison. While the reports of Derafshan’s torture are disturbing in their own right, they fit into a pattern of increasingly reprehensible misconduct by Iranian authorities.

An Iranian appeals court has prolonged the unjust detention of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by a year, after it upheld an earlier verdict and sentencing. Her detention began in 2016 when she was arrested, jailed, and accused of plotting against the Iranian government. The one-year extension to her detainment initially came in an April verdict charging her with “spreading propaganda.” Given that Nazanin has already served her initial sentence, it is evident that these new charges are spurious and politically motivated. Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, and many others including human rights groups, see this as yet another example of the Iranian government imprisoning a dual national to use as a bargaining chip in unrelated diplomatic negotiations.