Mahvash SABET

Image Credit: ermission granted by Sabet’s family

Teacher and poet Mahvash Sabet remained free on medical grounds throughout 2025, facing potential return to prison to serve an unjust 10-year prison sentence imposed in 2022 over unfounded ‘espionage’ charges related to her activities on behalf of the Baha’i minority in Iran.   She remained subject to a travel ban, preventing her from visiting family abroad.  She has previously spent a decade in prison due solely to her religious beliefs as a member of Iran’s persecuted Baha’i minority (see Case Lists 2013-2019 and 2022- 2025). Due to inadequate medical care in prison, her health continued to deteriorate in 2025. 

Sabet, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and heart disease among other illnesses, was temporarily released from prison in December 2024, after undergoing open-heart surgery, in order to recover at home. PEN International remains gravely concerned about the sharp deterioration in Sabet’s health and calls for her not to be returned to prison.  

Sabet, born on 4 February 1953, began her professional career as a teacher and worked as a principal at several schools. She also collaborated with the National Literacy Committee of Iran. Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Sabet was fired from her job and blocked from working in public education, like thousands of other Iranian Baha’i educators. She served for 15 years as director of the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, which provides alternative higher education for Baha’i youth. Mahvash Sabet began writing poetry in prison, and a collection of her prison poems was translated into English and published in 2013. Two more volumes of poems رها (A Tale of Love – More Prison Poems) and حکایت عاشقی (Love Story) were published in 2019 and 2021. She is an honorary member of the Austrian PEN and Danish PEN and was named as English PEN’s 2017 Writer of Courage by PEN Pinter Prize winner Michael Longley. PEN International has long campaigned for her release,  including through an appeal on the 2025 International World Poetry Day.