Azar Korvandi Mousazadeh, a political prisoner currently held in Qarchak Prison in Varamin, is in critical condition due to worsening heart complications and a history of cancer. She is in urgent need of specialized medical care outside the prison, yet judicial and prison authorities have refused to transfer her to the hospital.
Following the destruction and forced relocation of women prisoners from Evin Prison, Mrs. Korvandi was transferred to the notorious Qarchak facility.
Azar Korvandi suffers from severe blockage in two major coronary arteries. Due to a deterioration in her health, she was recently transferred to the prison infirmary, where she received oxygen therapy and underwent an ECG test. However, the inadequate medical infrastructure in Qarchak cannot meet her urgent needs, and the prescribed medications are no longer effective.
Qarchak Prison: A Facility of Inhumane Conditions
Qarchak Prison is plagued by dire sanitary and living conditions. The lack of proper restrooms, the use of makeshift plastic toilets, substandard food, the absence of cooking facilities, and the imprisonment of political detainees alongside drug addicts and mentally ill patients have turned the prison into a site of constant psychological and physical distress for inmates.
Many prisoners transferred to Qarchak have not received their personal belongings and are deprived of even the most basic necessities. This has taken a severe toll on their physical and mental health, placing their lives at serious risk.
Systematic Medical Neglect: A Deadly Game with a Prisoner’s Life
Despite Azar Korvandi’s urgent need for specialized cardiac and cancer-related care, authorities have not only denied her transfer to the hospital but have also rejected requests for medical furlough.
This denial reflects a broader, systematic pattern by the Iranian regime: depriving political prisoners of essential medical treatment, a practice that often leads to their gradual death.
Born in 1962, Azar Korvandi is married and has two children. She was previously imprisoned as a political detainee in the 1980s, during which she was pregnant at the time of her arrest and gave birth while enduring harsh prison conditions under interrogation.
She was arrested in the summer of 2019 on charges of collaborating with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and promoting anti-regime propaganda after holding family counseling sessions in her private garden in Shahriar. She was released on bail then, but later convicted in December 2021 by the Tehran Revolutionary Court.
Mrs. Korvandi received a five-year prison sentence for “assembly and collusion to act against national security” and an additional one-year sentence for “propaganda against the state.” As supplementary punishment, she was banned from leaving the country for two years and prohibited from membership and activity in social, political, and cultural groups for two years.
On July 30, 2023, she was summoned to the First Branch of the Enforcement Office of the Tehran District 33 Prosecutor’s Office, arrested, and transferred to Evin Prison to serve her sentence.
