Last Update
July 26, 2020
Organisation
Unknown
Gender
Male
Ethnic Group
Baloch
Religoius Group
Sunni
Province
Tehran
Occupation
Social Media Activist
Sentence
Four years and nine months imprisonment
Status
In prison
Institution investigating
Ministry of Intelligence
Charges
Conspiring against national security
Esmaeil Gorgij is a Balochi citizen who was arrested for his online activities.
Gorgij was arrested by agents from the Ministry of Intelligence in 2017 and was forced to spend three months in detention and interrogation in Section 209 of Evin Prison.
Esmaeil Gorgij, who is a Sunni Muslim, was arrested due to his online activities related to his faith. The Iranian Prisons Atlas reported that Gorgij’s "proselytism" and "propaganda" were cited as evidence in the charges against him.
Gorgij’s trial took place in 2017 in Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts of Tehran, presided over by Judge Salvati. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment on the charge of “gathering and colluding against national security.”
This ruling was reduced to four years and nine months in prison by the Court of Appeals in March 2019.
On January 19, 2020, Esmaeil Gorgij went on hunger strike while in prison in order to bring attention to his request to be transferred from Evin Prison in Tehran to Zahedan Central Prison, in the province of Sistan and Balochistan, where he lived. Mr Gorgij is the father to a five year old child and demanded that he be moved to Zahedan Prison so that he could organize weekly visitation meetings with his family.
Esmaeil Gorgij is currently still serving his prison sentence in Evin Prison, Tehran.