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Outrage over re-arrest of Iranian trade unionist
23 November 2006
 |  | | Mansour Osanloo on his release from prison in August this year, now back in detention | |
The ITF has this week condemned the violent re-arrest of a prominent trade union leader in Iran, just months after his release from a notorious detention centre in the capital city.
Mansour Osanloo, President of the trade union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, was bundled into a car on 19 November by at least five armed plain-clothes security officials. They refused to show identification cards or a warrant for his arrest and began to beat him and pull him towards a car. One of the two colleagues that were with him during the arrest was also abused, punched and had a gun pointed at him when he asked for identification. Osanloo was forced into a car after the officials fired gunshots into the air.
Arrested on 22 December last year during trade union protests, Osanloo was detained in Tehran’s Evin prison, an infamous detention centre for political prisoners. He was subsequently released on bail in August following an international campaign led by the ITF and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) (formerly the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions).
He was due to attend a court hearing on 22 November to answer charges against him by state prosecutors regarding the bus workers' industrial action; some 16 other union members also face similar charges.
Both the ITUC and the ITF have written to the Iranian government protesting this latest arrest.
ITF General Secretary David Cockroft said: “We and other trade unionists worldwide will redouble our efforts to put pressure on the Iranian government to leave this man alone and permit the efforts to build a free trade union of a kind that most of us take for granted.”
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