Calls grow for information regarding Iranian littérateur Ali Asadollahi’s whereabouts and his release
by Piyush Mathur
Ali Asadollahi, one of the contributors to the collection of verses Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution (2025), is reported to have been taken away from his home in Iran by the security forces, and detained or imprisoned in some secret location.
Ali Asadollahi, Iranian poet and translator
(Image credit: Bänoo Zan, Facebook post dated January 26, 2026)
Ms. Bänoo Zan, one of the two editors of the above anthology, made a call on Facebook on January 26 for information regarding his whereabouts and immediate release.
Zan, who resides in Toronto, Canada, made her appeal on her own Facebook wall as well as that of the UK-based outlet The Freethinker.
Describing Asadollahi as an ‘outspoken’ writer and ‘translator’ who ‘tried to raise the voices of other Iranian writers in the world’, Zan’s post expressed a serious collective concern regarding his arrest and a lack of information about his current location. She has pleaded people to ‘spread the word’ regarding Asadollahi’s situation and press the Iranian authorities to free him at the earliest.
There was also a post made the same day previously on Instagram—apparently from an account based in Tehran, Iran—informing the public about Asadollahi’s arrest and a subsequent lack of information about where he may have been taken. Machine translated into English, this Instagram post states the following:
Ali Asadollahi, the poet and translator, was arrested last night by the rush of security agents to his home in Tehran and taken to an unknown place. In these bloody days when many writers and poets have been silent, he is the true voice of the rise of the Iranian nation. They can't turn down the sound. The voice of the Iranian nation cannot be silenced.
That post, whose link is mentioned in Zan’s post, received almost 11,000 ‘hearts’ within a matter of three days.
It is important to note that Asadollahi was also arrested on November 21, 2022, reportedly prompting the American and Sydney PEN associations to make a joint public appeal for his release.
Zan’s post—tagged to the Facebook accounts of PEN International, The League of Canadian Poets, The Writers’ Union of Canada, Guernica Editions, among others—bluntly states the following: ‘The Islamic Republic is directly responsible for Ali’s safety and life.’
An alum of Allameh Tabataba'i University, Zan is the founder of Shab-e She'r, which organises poetry functions in Toronto.
This is a screenshot of Zan’s Facebook post dated January 26, 2026. (Image credit: Public domain)
This is a screenshot of an Instagram post, dated January 26, 2026, informing the public about Ali Asadollahi’s arrest and disappearance; the post also summarizes Asadollahi’s contribution to poetry, claiming that his is the true voice of the Iranian people that cannot be silenced. (Image credit: Public domain)