(Beirut) – Eight environmental activists arbitrarily detained in Iran in January and February 2018 remain in detention eight months later without clear charges, Human Rights Watch said today. Iranian authorities should either immediately release them or charge them with recognizable crimes and produce evidence to justify their continued detention. 

On September 30, family members said on social media that judicial authorities had told them that the detained environmentalists can only be represented by lawyers from a pre-approved list of 20 that the judiciary had published in June. The authorities h