Mahire was arrested in November 2018 and received a sentence of 16 years and half in prison. According to her sister, now in Turkey, Mahire has been accused of “supporting terrorism” solely because in 2015 she sent money to her son who at that time was studying in Egypt. The last time the two sisters spoke was in October 2018 over a video call. In the summer of 2021, Mahire’s sister managed to re-establish contact with her family in Xinjiang and that was when she found out about the detention and sentence of her sister. Before being arrested, Mahire was interrogated by the police several times. In October 2018, the police told her that they would arrest her as soon as she could stop breastfeeding her 2-year-old daughter. She was arrested the following month. Her sister told Amnesty International that Mahire is allowed to call her family in Xinjiang on average once every two months and is currently held in an unofficial detention facility between Artux and Kashgar.