Hojjat Kermani, an Iranian lawyer, has announced the re-arrest of Sepideh Kashani and Houman Jokar, two environmental activists who had previously spent years in prison.
Kermani told the website Emtedad that security agents raided the couple's home on the afternoon of July 1, confiscated all of their electronic devices, and took them into custody.
According to the lawyer, security forces also arrested Sima Kashani, Sepideh Kashani's sister.
He added that it remains unclear which security agency carried out the arrests and that, with upcoming public holidays and the closure of judicial offices, concerns among the families have grown.
No official reason has been given for the arrests.
Sepideh Kashani and Houman Jokar are members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, whose staff, along with several other environmental activists, were arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization during the winter of 2018.
Kavous Seyed-Emami, one of those detained in the case and a Canadian citizen, died under suspicious circumstances in Evin Prison just days after his arrest. Shortly afterward, the IRGC Intelligence Organization accused the detained environmental activists of espionage and collaboration with hostile governments.
Isa Kalantari, the former head of Iran's Department of Environment, later stated that there had been "no evidence" to support allegations that the detained activists had engaged in espionage.
In May 2018, Mahmoud Sadeghi, then a member of the Iranian Parliament, said that during a meeting of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, counterintelligence experts from the Ministry of Intelligence had explicitly told lawmakers that they had found no evidence indicating that the environmental activists had committed espionage.
Despite those findings, the activists were tried in Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Abolghasem Salavati, and received various prison sentences.
