A female Iranian political prisoner has told her family that she has been repeatedly subjected to strip-down searches in various detention centers.

Mozhgan Kavosi was first arrested in northern Iran during the November 2019 nationwide protests and sentenced to six months in prison by a local prosecutor. Later her sentence increased during an appeal to nearly seven years.

Kavosi, who is a 45-year-old mother of two daughters, belongs to a religious minority but she was charged with propaganda against the regime and an array of other vague political accusations.

Kavosi told her family that every time she was stripped-searched, she told prison guards that she is a political prisoner, not a common criminal and their intrusion into her privacy is simply a psychological pressure tactic.

In line with a recent policy of ‘exiling’ political prisoners to distant prisons, Kavosi is now serving her time in Karaj, near Tehran. The tactic is meant to make it harder for their families to visit them.

Kavosi has also been deprived of her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who was arrested in August along with others for threatening to sue Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for banning American and British Covid vaccines and causing thousands of more deaths.