Ali Abdi (activist)

Ali Abdi (born 21 April 1985, Persian: علی عبدی) is an Iranian human and women rights activist and former student activist at Sharif University of Technology.

Activism
Abdi took part in the 2006 One Million Signatures women's rights campaign.

In 2009, Abdi was a participant in the Iranian Green Movement while a student at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. He was able to avoid arrest, and in September he left Iran after obtaining a student visa.

After completing his Ph.D. at Yale, Abdi moved to Brooklyn, New York City. While living outside of Iran, Abdi continued to remain involved in activism. In New York, he worked on campaigns allowing for medicine to be imported into Iran, as well as campaigns opposing sanctions on Iran due to their humanitarian cost. Online, he continued to remain active on Iranian social media. In 2013, Abdi received political asylum in the United States.

In 2017, Abdi opposed further restrictions on the United States' Visa Waiver Program, fearing they would punish Iranian citizens for the actions of their government.

2023 arrest
After 14 years in exile living in USA, EU and Afghanistan, he returned to Iran in June 2023 and was arrested in November 2023.

Abdi is currently imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison, controlled by the IRGC's intelligence agents, and faces serious health issues, including the risk of losing his eyesight due to inadequate medical care. The specifics of the charges against him remain unclear.

Personal life and education
He finished his Bsc in mechanical engineering in 2008 from Sharif University of Technology which is considered Iran's MIT and the country most prestigious university. He moved to EU for graduate study and earned a master's degree in gender studies at a school in Budapest, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University. Abdi traveled to Afghanistan in January 2017 to work on his doctoral thesis; he was subsequently impacted by Executive Order 13769 and subsequent executive orders that restricted Iranian nationals from entering the United States.

In 2021, while in Afghanistan as part of his PhD studies in anthropology at Yale University, Abdi was captured by Taliban in Bamyan during Talban take over of Afghanistan. He was released after 2 weeks.

After release he moved to Turkey and finished his PhD there. After defense, and losing his right eye sight, he decided to go back to Iran to be with his family. At Embays of Iran in Ankara for renewal of his passport he went under 4 hours of security interview about his pasts, but he eventually granted entry and was issued a new passport and went to Iran. After about 1 month in Isfahan, Iran he was arrested and charged.