Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian has contracted the Covid-19 disease, but the clerical regime’s Intelligence Ministry officials do not allow her to be dispatched to a civic hospital for treatment.
Ali Jalalian, Zeinab’s father, announced: “On Tuesday night, June 2, Zeinab Jalalian was transferred to the prison’s medical center due to severe shortness of breath and after being examined and tested by a doctor, she was diagnosed with Covid-19.”
Despite the diagnosis, Qarchak Prison authorities have refused to send Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian to a civic hospital on the orders of the mullahs’ Intelligence Ministry.
Reliable sources say in a telephone call on June 6 to her family, Zeinab said she was being held along with several other infected inmates in a separate room in the Quarantine ward of Qarchak Prison. She said she was still suffering from short breath and high fever.
According to the doctor working at the prison’s clinic, the virus has infected her lungs and they are trying to bring it under control.
Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian served 13 years of her life sentence in Khoy Prison. On May 2, 2020, she transferred to the quarantine ward of Qarchak Prison in Varamin where some 80 inmates are being held in violation of social distancing protocols. At least 20 inmates were reported to have the infection by the state-run Khabar Online news agency on April 15, 2020.
In a call for urgent action on June 15, 2018, Amnesty International said Zeinab Jalalian is being subjected to torture by blocking her access to medical care.
According to Amnesty International, “Zeynab Jalalian also has heart, intestinal, and kidney problems, as well as an oral thrush condition that has caused painful white bumps on her tongue and interferes with her ability to eat and swallow. She is at risk of losing her eyesight in prison as she is being denied surgery for a worsening eye condition called pterygium, which is impairing her vision and causing her severe discomfort.”
“She has repeatedly asked the prison authorities to take her to a hospital outside the prison for specialized testing and treatment for her health problems but the authorities have either rejected outright her requests or have accepted them on the condition that she make videotaped ‘confessions’,” Amnesty international added.
