Farangis Mazloumi who is the mother of resistant political prisoner Soheil Arabi has been arrested and taken to an unknown location by intelligence agents.
Eight intelligence agents raided the residence of the sister of Farangis Mazloumi on Monday, July 22, 2019, and arrested her. They confiscated Farangis Mazloumi and her sister’s cellphones and then took her away to an unknown location.
Soheil Arabi, 32, married with a young daughter, is a blogger who has been imprisoned for putting posts on Facebook critical of the clerical regime. Mr. Arabi spent 4.5 years in Evin Prison and was subsequently transferred to the Greater Tehran’s Penitentiary (a.k.a. Fashafouyeh Prison) in February 2018, where he is being detained under harsh conditions. He has been subjected to various forms of mental and physical tortures over these years. He has gone on lengthy hunger strikes at least three times to protest brutal mistreatment of prisoners by the prison guards and interrogators.
Farangis Mazloumi, his mother, has been under tremendous pressure over these years. She has been commuting long distances to prison, but deprived of being able to visit her son.
She had previously said, “I am tortured every day and every night. Will I be alive for 11 more years? How can I bear this suffering? Can my heart endure all this torture? Is the life and youth of our children so worthless? Every time I went to court, they gave me an uppity answer. Who will answer my plea from all this oppression?”
On the eve of the Persian New Year, last year, she sent a message to the families of political prisoners, saying, “In protest to the beating and transfer of Golrokh Iraee and Atena (Daemi), Soheil went on hunger strike and demanded that the two women be returned to Evin Prison. Soheil was subsequently brutalized and banished to the Greater Tehran’s Prison. He has been beaten repeatedly to compel him to break his hunger strike. But he has continued with his hunger strike. Today, I went to the prison to visit my son, but they prevented our visit. They said I cannot visit him because he has been transferred to another ward. They broke my heart and my heart broke into one thousand pieces… Our children are imprisoned for freedom. They want freedom so that all the people can live together in peace and friendship.”
