Atossa Najafi tries to keep her composure as she describes what happened. "About three weeks ago, security forces searched our apartment, confiscated personal belongings, and took my brother away," she recounts.
Since that day — June 6 — she has been plagued by worry for her brother Parsa, 19, and their parents in Isfahan, Iran.
Najafi herself is in Germany. The 23-year-old came here as a student three years ago and has been studying dentistry at the Charite hospital in Berlin. "Since then, we have been living with uncertainty," she told DW. "We know nothing about his whereabouts."
Najafi's family are members of the Baha'i faith, a religion that originated in the mid-19th century in what was then Persia (now Iran) and is considered a monotheistic world religion. However, it isn't recognized in Iran, and the Shiite Muslim regime there consider Baha'is heretics. As a result, the Baha'i population in Iran has been persecuted for decades.
Atossa Najafi, a Baha'i student from IranImage: Christoph Strack/DW
