The Human Rights Activists news agency has reported that unionist teacher Mahdi Farahi Shandiz was arrested in the first week of January to serve a three-year jail term.

Shandiz had been previously detained on May 1, 2010 and had spent more than eight months in solitary confinement in the notorious Evin prison before being released on January 26, 2011.

Intelligence Ministry agents have arrested the 51-year-old teacher and labour activist Shandiz numerous times before.

On Friday, The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), called for urgent action on the recent arrests of and acts of harassment against several Iranian trade unionists, including Shandiz, Shahrokh Zamani, Mohammad Jarrahi, Nima Pouryaghoub, Sassan Vahebivash, Sheys Amani, Sadiq Karimi, Sharif Sa’ed-Panah, Mozaffar Salehnia, Maysam Nejati-Aref, Ebrahim Madadi, Reza Shahabi, Mohammad Hosseini and Mehdi Farahi Shandiz.

Source : The Green Voice of Freedom