UN human rights experts* today expressed serious concern that Iran continues to deny appropriate healthcare to detainees, despite repeated calls.
The Iranian judiciary should release three women labor activists and a journalist who are still in jail two months after they were detained following a May Day demonstration in Tehran protesting the difficult economic condition workers face, Human Rights Watch said today. The four detainees appear to be detained solely because of their participation in the peaceful assembly.
Civil society activists Atena Daemi and Golrakh Ebrahimi Iraee have been charged with “propaganda against the regime” and “insulting the Supreme Leader,” adding to previous charges against them. Although human rights organizations and activists regard the new charges against the activists as harsh, the trial differed from previous hearings in that lawyers for the defendants were able to review their clients’ files ahead of the session.
More than a million people in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe have come together to express their outrage at the sentencing of prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to 38 years and six months in prison and 148 lashes after two grossly unfair trials, Amnesty International announced today, as signatures demanding her release were handed in to Iranian embassies around the world.
The Observatory has been informed by the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI) about the deterioration of the medical condition of Ms. Narges Mohammadi, a journalist, Spokesperson and Vice-President of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) [1], who is serving a 16-year prison sentence. Ms. Narges Mohammadi suffers from several very serious health conditions, including a pulmonary embolism and a neurological disorder that results in partial paralysis. Her health condition is exacerbated by the authorities’ refusal to allow her adequate medical care in or out of prison.
June 11, 2019 – Political prisoner Alireza Shirmohammadali was stabbed to death in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary (GTCP) after he was unlawfully kept in a ward that holds inmates convicted of dangerous crimes, his lawyer informed the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). “This was a preventable death and resulted from gross negligence on the part of the authorities,” said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI’s executive director. “The judiciary has been repeatedly warned of the dangers of its failure to separate political prisoners from inmates convicted of violent crimes.”
“A few hours ago agents came to our house and took away my husband Mehdi Hajati to enforce a one-year prison sentence,” Hajati’s wife Zohreh Rastegari tweeted on June 2, 2019. A member of the Shiraz City Council, Hajati had been arrested in October 2018 and held for 10 days for seeking the release of two local Baha’is who had been arrested for practicing their faith, which is severely persecuted by the Iranian government.
A revolutionary court in the city of Bushehr in southern Iran sentenced seven members of the Baha’i faith to three years in prison each for allegedly answering questions about their religious beliefs to Muslim guests in their homes.
Responding to the news that Iranian human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi has been sentenced to 30 years in prison and 111 lashes for his human rights work, including publicizing violations through a channel he set up on the Telegram mobile messaging app and giving media interviews, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Philip Luther, said: “This shockingly harsh sentence is an outrageous injustice. Amirsalar Davoudi is blatantly being punished for his work defending human rights.
At the urging of doctors, the authorities allowed Narges to be admitted to hospital for an urgent hysterectomy in May. Her family is now asking that they allow Narges to be hospitalised long term to recover, or granted medical leave.
