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11 December, 2006
In Iran, Mansour Osanloo was arrested again, on 19 November. Osanloo is the head of the trade union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company,.
He was detained outside his home, by plain-clothed security officials, a day before he was summoned to appear in court. Officials beat him and forced him, at gunpoint, into a car. Osanloo is said to be held at the Evin Prison, where he may be in need of urgent medical treatment. He had had eye-surgery only days before he was detained, the result of injuries suffered during his previous arrest, earlier this year.
On 26 November, Osanloo appeared before an Iranian court, in the absence of his lawyer. No specific charges were cited, however. Osanloo had been released in August 2006, after an international campaign led by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). See: /en/78-ICEM-InBrief/1661-Iranian-Bus-Drivers-Given-Global-Union-Support.
According to a press communiqué by the Tehran union, also known as Sherkat-e Vahed, three other unionists were also arrested on 3 December: Seyyed Davoud Razavi and Abdolreza Taraazi, members of the Executive Board, and Gholamreza Gholam-Hosseini, a union activist. The three men were detained as they were distributing leaflets. The first two were released later the same day. Gholamreza Gholam-Hosseini was only released this weekend.
The three men are among the 50 bus workers that are currently still without pay since a January 2006 strike. In July, the ITF and the ITUC already lodged a formal protest before the ILO over Osanloo’s initial detention, and over the crackdown on the union Sherkat-e Vahed.
The ITF has called the re-arrest an “outrageous attempt to crush both a brave individual and all attempts to assert basic trade union rights in the country.” The ICEM fully supports the call of the ITF to continue to apply pressure on Iranian authorities over human and labour rights.
For more information, including the possibility to take action, please click here:
http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/Osanloo.cfm.