Najmeh Vahedi, a graduate sociology student who will be serving a seven-year sentence for alleged collaboration with the United States, has issued a series of tweets defending the behavior that led to her conviction.

A Revolutionary Court, according to Vahedi, found her guilty of “collaboration with the hostile government of the United States” and three different international organization over “women and family issues.” This included cooperation with an Islamic institute in Malaysia, and hosting workshops for women on marriage laws, including prenuptial agreements, alimony and custody laws.

Vahedi claimed to have a legal permit for her work but that the court had ruled that promotion of prenuptials and “empowerment of women” undermined the country’s laws and amounted to “an infiltration project to destroy the foundations of family.”

“Can they really arrest and imprison someone for organizing a workshop on prenuptial agreements?” she asked in one tweet. 

One of the charges brought against her during the trial was working for the Washington-based International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a nonprofit organization founded by the Ford Foundations and the US State Department that promotes education and development around the world.

In her tweets Vahedi explained how her charges were based on an email with a job offer from a legal advice portal, which she has not named but says was later blocked by the authorities. She did not accept the job offer, a point she said had been acknowledged during her interrogation.

Vahedi went on to explain that her interrogators believed the portal was linked to IREX, and a notorious Judge, Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, had sentenced her for collaboration with IREX and hence “the hostile government of the United States.” The judge noted that the portal, which he believed had been conducting criminal activities, had “promoted prenups,” thereby suggesting a link with her own work. In its verdict, the court said Vahedi was an “infiltrator” because she had diluted her real views and beliefs so that she could write in reformist newspapers and websites.

Vahedi explained that during her interrogation she was asked about a workshop held by Freedom House, a US-based, US government-funded nongovernmental organization, in Georgia. She had denied taking part in that workshop, but was apparently sentenced for participation in it.

Sentences passed on Vahedi, and her lawyer friend Hoda Amid, by Judge Salavati on December 12 were confirmed by the Supreme Court on Saturday [February 13]. Amid was sentenced to eight years in prison and suspended from practicing law for two years. Both women have also been deprived of some civil rights for two years.

Revolutionary Guards Intelligence arrested the two women simultaneously but separately on September 1, 2018 at their homes in connection with the workshop they had hosted. In a statement on September 3, 2018, Amnesty International said the arrests were “a blatant attempt to silence those advocating for human rights in Iran.”

Vahedi wrote in her tweets that well-placed media had quoted some contents of her case to which she herself, and her lawyers, had no access.