A letter by PEN America, signed by dozens of high-profile writers and artistic figures, calls for Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi to be acquitted
Nobel laureates JM Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk are among the signatories to a letter demanding the release from prison of the Iranian writers Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi.
The writers began a collective 15-and-a-half-year sentence at Evin Prison in Tehran in September 2020, on what writers’ association PEN America said were “spurious” national security and propaganda charges. Since then, Abtin and Khandan Mahabadi have both contracted Covid-19. Abtin is a poet, screenwriter and film-maker; Bajan is a novelist and journalist; and Khandan Mahabadi is an author and literary critic. According to PEN, their homes were raided and writings confiscated in 2015. They stood trial in 2019 and were sentenced to prison for “propaganda” and “colluding against national security”.
