Niloufar Bayani is a widely respected conservation scientist who works at the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. She received a Master’s in conservation biology from Columbia University in 2012, and then worked for the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in Geneva before joining the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation in 2017.
She and eight colleagues were arrested in January 2018 and accused of espionage as a result of their use of camera traps to document the movements of Iranian wildlife. One of her colleagues, Kavous Seyed-Emami, co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, soon died in prison under questionable circumstances.
Niloufar Bayani was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She appealed the sentence which was upheld on February 18. Bayani was able to send letters and other documents to BBC Persian that exposed sexual threats and torture her interrogators used against her.
For example, in a letter written in early February 2020, Niloufar Bayani described how interrogators showed her a photo of Kavous Seyed Emami’s corpse and warned: “That’s going to be your fate and the fate of all of your colleagues and family members unless you write whatever we want.”
Excerpts of these letters, translated into English, can be found hereherehere.