Campaign founder Nasrin Roshan told the JC about her jail ordeal in Iran.
Courageously sharing her traumatic memories, she recalls: “I was sexually abused, beaten, and psychologically abused. I was kept in solitary confinement and only dragged out to be shown the lifeless, hanging bodies of my friends who had also been imprisoned.”
Roshan says that guards at the notorious Evin prison whipped her feet to the point she could not walk, forcing her to crawl around the prison floor for six months. She was placed in a wooden coffin with air holes for prolonged periods.
Eventually she was released. She said: “When I left Evin prison after four years, imprisoned by the Iranian regime, I hugged my cellmates and told them I would never stop working to set them free.”
Lord Walney (Image: Lord Walney)[Missing Credit]
After moving to the UK, Roshan became heavily involved in activism against the regime.
In 2023, she returned to Iran to visit her aunt, who was dying, only to be jailed again.
“The IRGC arrested me because they knew of my activism in London, and I found myself back in Evin.
“They asked me how much the UK government would give them to release me. I told them that the UK wouldn’t give them anything. They said they would make up a charge against me in order to sentence me.”
Alleged groundlessly to be spying for a foreign power, she spent the next 18 months in prison, often in solitary confinement, unable to contact her family to tell them she was alive. Released again in 2025, she returned to the UK with even greater to commitment to help friends still oppressed in Iran.
“They’re still waiting for me,” she says. “They’re still there.”
Now in her early sixties, she has set up the campaign group alongside fellow dissidents Gio Esfandeyari and Lola Ameri. The aim is to pressure the government into setting a deadline for the full proscription of the IRGC.
Lola Ameri (With credit)[Missing Credit]
Upcoming events include a discussion in parliament hosted by Lord Walney on June 23. The former Labour MP told the JC: “It is so important for MPs and peers to understand the threat that the IRGC is posing right now on British streets so I am looking forward to hosting this group in parliament next month.
“British Jews and Iranian dissidents are being repeatedly targeted, and it is also important to show that this evil regime sees Britain as its enemy and is stepping up its campaign against our way of life."
Gio Esfandeyari (With credit)[Missing Credit]
While welcoming the government’s announcement in the King’s Speech of an intention to proscribe the IRGC, the group believes fuller and more urgent action is required.
Esfandeyari, of think tank Lotus Advocacy, said: “We need more people to know who the IRGC is and what they do and to get involved and contact their MPs to get them to bring the need to fast-track the proscription to parliament.
“The potential proscription may have been announced but the government is not acting with enough urgency.
“The threat is serious, to Iranians still living in Iran and dissidents living here in the UK as well as the Jewish community. We have seen it over the last few months with all the attacks with Iran-linked Islamist groups claiming responsibility.”
The third founder of Ban IRGC, 32-year-old Ameri, says she decided to help set up the group because “protesting every single weekend is not enough anymore”.
She said: “We do not have time to delay this any further. The IRGC are a risk to national security and to UK citizens.”
Ameri left Iran for the UK aged five. Becoming a journalist for dissident news channel Manoto means she cannot unable return to Iran to visit her family because of the danger she would become a target of the regime.
She says: “Not being able to go home means that you will fight in any way you can to find a way back.
“But my work gives me that sense of being a little bit closer with the people in Iran. I am doing my part in any way I can to help them.”
