With mounting pressures on Iran’s social movements and activists, recent heavy judicial sentences for women activists, and the new wave of student arrests, the bus carrying Mansur Ossanloo, the head of Iran’s large Vahed company bus syndicate workers (Sandikaye Kargaran Sherkate Vahed Tehran) was stopped in eastern part of the capital by a Peugeot car and Ossanloo was forcefully transferred into the vehicle.

Plain-clothes agents then took Ossanloo away while the streets surrounding the incident were tense from the loud protesting shouts of Ossanloo and the violence that followed, while the agents told the public that they were arresting a thief. News reports indicate that the syndicate leader has been transferred to an undisclosed location. Other news reports indicate that the bus driver carrying Ossanloo described the events to the victim’s family relatives, and that agents have tasked 110 members of the law enforcement agencies to “look into” the situation by invading Ossanloo’s house.

Ibrahim Madadi, the number 2 man at the bus syndicate who himself has just been released from detention by intelligence agents declared his lack of knowledge for the street kidnapping of Ossanloo and while condemning the security agents involved in the incident and the beatings that ensued demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Ossanloo.