Quick Facts
Biography
Niloufar Bayani (Persian: نیلوفر بیانی) is an Iranian wildlife activist and researcher. She was convicted in 2019 of espionage by Iranian authorities in a closed-door trial in Iran, and received a 10-year prison sentence.
Education and career
Bayani graduated from McGill University in Canada with a BSc in Biology in 2009 and holds an MA in Conservation Biology from Columbia University. She subsequently worked as a consultant and project adviser to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) between 2012 and 2017.
After coming back to Iran, she joined the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), an Iranian environmental organization that was co-founded by Kavous Seyed-Emami and some of the other Iranian environmentalists activities. PWHF is a not-for-profit organization supervised by a board of trustees. An executive board whose members are well versed in conservation strategies and natural resource management.In Iran, she worked on the wildlife projects, setting camera traps in seven provinces to monitor the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah
Arrest and imprisonment
Bayani was arrested in January 2018 by Iranian authorities on charges of espionage.
Bayani said that her interrogators also showed her a photo of Kavous Seyed-Emami (the head of the environmental institute that she worked for,, and who's body was found in his prison cell two days after his arrest with officials claiming he had committed suicide).
According to a BBC report, Bayani was separated and detained incommunicado for eight months and her interrogators tortured and intimidated her with sexual assault.. She was sentenced in 2020 without a lawyer and despite her claims.