She said: “[The Regime] have shown that they do not care about justice. We really have no idea what they want.”

More than a year on from the arrest, eight of the environmentalists remain in detention, but the founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), Canadian-Iranian professor Kavous Seyed-Emami died under suspicious circumstances in prison shortly after being arrested.

Iranian authorities claim he committed suicide, something widely rejected by those who knew him, but have refused to allow an independent investigation or even allow his wife Maryam Mombini to leave the country, even though she is not under arrest and is a Canadian citizen.

Despite a request from her lawyer, Mombini still does not know why the Regime paced her under a travel ban.

The remaining activists are being held in prison, even though their families, human rights organisations, the Iranian Parliament, and even their lawyers who were chosen specifically by the Judiciary say that they are innocent of all spying charges.

Rajabi said: “There is nothing in the case to indicate guilt because they have done nothing. Only two of the eight made confessions under coercion… As we know, forced confessions are not legally valid and since [Niloofar] Bayani declared in court that she had been forced to confess, then there is nothing in the case to support charges against these detainees.”

These charges were changed in the summer, after the finding from the Parliament, and the severity increased. Four were charged with “corruption on earth”, which can carry the death penalty, three were charged with espionage, and one was accused of “cooperating and collusion with a hostile country.”

Many of the detainees are suffering from poor health, including Morad Tahbaz, who is critically ill with cancer and is being denied medication and treatment despite assurances from the Regime authorities.

Rajabi said: “Tahbaz has been suffering from cancer for some time and judicial authorities and security officials are all aware of this… Tahbaz is in critical condition and needs to be transferred to a hospital. As of now, security officials have prevented it.”

The families of the detained have been keeping up the pressure on the Iranian Regime in an attempt to get their loved ones realised, but so far the mullahs have not changed.
Rajabi, who lives in Germany, wrote letters to President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian MP Mahmoud Aghasi, but got no reply. She has received a response from United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman and German Green Party representative Omid Nouripour who promised to look into the matter.