According to informed sources who spoke to IranWire, the security agents who came to detain Maleki subjected him to a physical beating during the arrest. The arresting agency has been identified as the Zanjan Provincial Intelligence Office — a branch of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence — which carries out operations against political and civil society targets in the region. Sources told IranWire that the agents explicitly threatened Maleki's family during the operation, warning them that they "would never see Mohammad again," leaving his loved ones in a state of extreme fear for his life.
A Pattern of Persecution
Maleki's arrest is not his first encounter with the Islamic Republic's security apparatus. He had previously been sentenced to ten years and three months in prison — five of which were enforceable — on charges of "propaganda against the system," "assembly and conspiracy against national security," and "forming a group with intent to disturb the country's security." In a remarkable admission of institutional pressure, the presiding judge of the Second Branch of the Zanjan Revolutionary Court, Azizollah Heidari, reportedly told Maleki at the time of sentencing that he had issued the verdict out of fear of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Beyond his broader civil rights work, Maleki had also been previously detained for leading protests in Zanjan against air and soil pollution caused by a lead and zinc mine operating near the city — an issue that has long been a source of public anger in the region. His case illustrates a broader pattern in Iran where environmental and ethnic minority activists face overlapping charges, as authorities routinely reframe grassroots civic organizing among Azerbaijani Turks as threats to national security.
Maleki's arrest comes amid a period of heightened crackdowns on civil society in Iran following the post-war protests and the post-Khamenei political turbulence. Iranian Azerbaijanis, who constitute a large ethnic minority in Iran's northwest, have faced intensified surveillance and arrests, with authorities treating cultural and civil rights activism as subversive separatism. As of the time of publication, no charges had been formally announced, no lawyer had been granted access, and his family remained without any official communication from the detaining authorities
Photo: Source