On December 13, 2016, five Gonabadi Dervishes were sent to prison after appearing in Dezful Prosecutor’s Office. They were interrogated by an investigating judge and were taken into custody after they refused to post the requested bail. Gholamreza Abarkar, Masoud Majdinasab, Hassan Diapour, Ghassem Manegari, and Mohammad Maleki had been summoned for objecting to the disparagement of their beliefs by a young clergyman.
During a memorial exhibition about the Iran-Iraq War in Dezful in August 2016, some offensive videos and photos about Gonabadi Dervishes’ beliefs were displayed by government hardliners, and also a young clergy named Namazi gave insulting speeches against Dervishes. This incident led to a protesting rally by Dervishes, which was eventually turned into violence after the police repressed the demonstration. The police dispersed the Dervishes and beat and arrested a number of them. Within hours, the arrested Dervishes were released after their families gathered in front of the police department and the governor’s office in Dezful. On November 9, 2016, Dervishes were charged with “disturbing the public order, vandalizing public properties, insulting the sanctities of Islam and the government officials” in Dezful Prosecutor’s Office, where they also were interrogated. They were sent to prison on December 13, 2016.
The officials in Dezful Prosecutor’s Office also indicted Ibrahim Shanbedi, Gonabadi Dervishes’ defense attorney. He was accused of revealing the documents and detail of his clients’ cases. There is no reporting about the outcome of actions against the five Gonabadi Dervishes and their attorney.
It is to be noted that, in January 2019, judicial officials in the city of Yazd did not allow Ebrahim Shanbedi to represent four other Gonabadi Dervishes who had been arrested in that city for a different case. They informed Shanbedi that he is not allowed to handle this case because his name is not among the judiciary’s trusted attorneys.