Saeed Madani, a scholar and former political prisoner, said earlier this week that he had been prevented from boarding a flight out of Tehran by the intelligence branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which confiscated his passport.

In a January 4 letter to Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, Madani said he was interrogated by the Intelligence Ministry before his planned departure in early December and told that he was free to travel.

Iranian authorities have in past years prevented a number of activists, journalists, and scholars from leaving the country by confiscating their passports.

Madani has been arrested and sentenced to prison several times in the past over his membership in a banned nationalist-religious opposition group.