HRANA– Branch 29 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Ali Younesi to a total of six years and three months in prison, along with social deprivations and exile. Amirhossein Moradi was also sentenced by the same branch to 15 months in prison.

Their lawyer, Mostafa Nili, announced that these award-winning Sharif University students were sentenced by Branch 29 to 15 months in prison each for “propaganda against the regime.” Younesi was additionally sentenced to five years in Kerman Prison on the charge of “endorsing and supporting the Zionist regime.”

According to Nili, as a complementary punishment, during his imprisonment, Younesi will be banned from access to the Internet and from making phone calls to outside the prison, except in necessary cases and under the supervision of the prison director.

The trial session for Younesi was held on July 28, and for Moradi on July 20, 2025.

Ali Younesi, a computer engineering student, and Amirhossein Moradi, a physics student at Sharif University of Technology, were arrested on April 10, 2020, by Ministry of Intelligence agents and transferred to the Ministry’s detention facility known as Ward 209 of Evin Prison. Their arrest was carried out by plainclothes agents without a judicial warrant and accompanied by beatings.

On May 5, 2020, Judiciary spokesperson Gholamhossein Esmaili accused the students of cooperating with an opposition group (the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran). Shortly afterward, Aida Younesi, Ali’s sister, released a video denying the accusations and stating that they were based on their parents’ history of imprisonment in the 1980s.

On June 25, 2022, more than two years after their arrest, Moradi and Younesi were transferred from the Ministry of Intelligence’s detention facility (Ward 209 of Evin Prison) to the prison’s public ward.

In their initial trial, the two award-winning Sharif University students were sentenced to 10 years in prison for “destruction and arson of public property” as the most severe charge, five years for “assembly and collusion against national security,” and one year for “propaganda against the regime.” On June 2022, Branch 36 of the Tehran Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict in full.

In March 2024, their lawyer announced that after the Supreme Court accepted their request for retrial, a parallel branch reduced Younesi’s maximum prison sentence from 10 years to six years and eight months. Nili added that the same process had previously been applied to Moradi, reducing his enforceable sentence to six years and eight months as well.

Amirhossein Moradi won the silver medal in Iran’s 2017 National Astronomy Olympiad, while Ali Younesi won the silver medal in 2016 and the gold medal in 2017. Younesi also won gold in the 12th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics, held in China, securing first place in the competition.