Danial Babayani, a Sunni Iranian citizen of Turkmen ethnicity, was arrested and sentenced to 23 months imprisonment due to his Facebook posts. However, he was able to leave the country before his sentence was enforced.

Babayani was arrested in September 2013 by agents from Golestan’s intelligence division. He spent four months in temporary detention. Throughout this period he was forced to stay in solitary confinement and endure repeated interrogations.

In mid-January 2014, Babayani was released from prison after paying a bail of 20 million tomans.

During his detention, Babayani was subjected to torture and other forms of pressure, as agents sought to obtain his Facebook account password. According to a report by HRA News Agency, Babayani and the other detainees of Turkmen ethnicity were subjected to interrogation and coercion until they recanted from Sunniism and agreed to convert to Shi’ism. They had been told they would be released after converting.

On December 10, 2013, Babayani’s case was heard in Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Gonbad Kavous, was presided over by Judge Qorbani. He was sentenced to 23 months in prison and found guilty of “insulting the Supreme Leader,” ‘insulting the Shia Imams,” “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” through his writings on Facebook and “possessing satellite equipment.” Babayani appealed the judgement but the initial ruling was upheld by Branch 2 of the Appeals Court of Golestan Province.

On June 17, 2014, he was summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office of Gonbad Kavous so that his prison sentence could be enforced.

Babayani had previously expected that, following the summons by the prosecutor’s office, he would be arrested and transferred to Gonbad Prison off the Minoodasht Motorway. But a few years later in 2018 he explained what have really happend to him: after receiving a second summons to prison, Babayani escaped to Turkey in 2015 with the help of smugglers to avoid further torture or harrassement.

Babayani told Journalism is Not a Crime that, even after he had left Iran, threats from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the Cyber Army continued, trying to force him to stop his human rights activities. He is currently living in Izmir, Turkey.

Babayani works as a translator and journalist. He also works for the human rights organisation Tuhra, the first organisation that works to defend Turkmen rights in Iran.

The environmental and agricultural crisis in Iran, such as the situation in the Turkmen Sahara wetlands, are among the concerns that Babayani writes about in his work as a journalist and human rights activist. His reports – which have focussed on the environmental crisis in Iran – have so far been published in issues of the online magazine Peace Mark.