Atena denied calls home; her lawyer imprisoned, parents sick with Covid
The authorities of the Lakan Prison of Rasht have confiscated the telephone card of political prisoner Atena Daemi. Therefore, she cannot call home to talk to her parents, who are sick with the Covid-19.
The warden of the Lakan Prison of Rasht was not at work for four weeks. He returned to work last week. Several prisoners, whose release had been delayed, were released, and the telephone lines were fixed.
However, since political prisoner Atena Daemi had published an audio recording of her voice on the abysmal conditions of this prison, Lakan prison authorities confiscated her telephone card.
Atena’s father, Hossein Daemi, tweeted a post, calling the measure “the worst oppression of prisoners’ families and us.”
Mr. Daemi pointed out that the authorities had also detained Atena’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, and that there was no other way left to find out about their daughter’s conditions.
The Daemi family lives at least 400 km away from Rasht. They are sick and quarantined at home and are not able to travel to visit their daughter.
Atena Daemi went on hunger strike on August 12 to protest the frequent cut-offs of telephone lines. She ended her hunger strike on August 18, after the telephone lines were fixed.
In a call home, she recorded a message in which she said: “I have already said, many times before, about the pains of prisoners convicted of ordinary crimes, but I was sentenced to re-imprisonment. This time, too, my intention from going on a hunger strike, despite repeated threats, was to draw people’s attention to the realities behind bars.”
Atena Daemi, 32, began serving her five-year sentence in November 2016 in the women’s ward of Evin Prison.
In 2018, Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced her to another jail sentence of 2 years and 1 month. Again, in July 2020, she received another sentence of 2 years and 74 lashes.
The authorities of Evin Prison sent her to exile to Lakan Prison of Rasht on March 16, 2021.
