Amnesty International on Tuesday urged Iran to free an Iranian LGBTI activist held for the last three months on charges linked to an appearance in a BBC documentary on gay rights in Iraqi Kurdistan. Zahra Sedighi-Hamadan had been based in Iraqi Kurdistan but was arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on October 27 while seeking to flee to neighbouring Turkey, Amnesty said. After a 53-day period of “forced disappearance” in solitary confinement in the northwestern Iranian city of Orumiyeh, she was in January brought before Iranian prosecutors and charged with “spreading corruption on earth” and “promoting homosexuality”. Amnesty said that the charges stemmed from her public defence of LGBTI rights on her social media platforms and an appearance in a BBC documentary aired in May 2021 about the abuses that LGBTI people suffer in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq (KRG).