“My wife was arrested two days after the general uprising of December 29, 2009, in our house and detained in prison for six years without any leaves,” the husband of political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared told news agencies.
Mr. Hassan Jaafari said his wife is a housewife and 40 years old and she was arrested for a mere “telephone contact” with her family in Ashraf (the seat of the main Iranian opposition, the PMOI, in Iraq) and condemned to 15 years imprisonment on the charge of “waging war on God”.
Mr. Jaafari said Judge Salavati who is in charge of his wife’s case had explicitly told him that Maryam was paying the price for the activities of her sisters and brothers.
Maryam Akbari Monfared is mother of three girls, now 10, 17 and 17. The latter is actually a niece adopted by her aunt. Her brother Reza Akbari Monfared is also in Gohardasht Prison, Karaj.
Maryam Akbari’s two brothers were executed by the clerical regime in 1981 and 1984 for supporting the PMOI and one of her sisters and another brother were killed in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in summer 1988.
According to Mr. Jaafari, Maryam was not allowed to employ an independent lawyer but was accompanied by a lawyer appointed by the court during her trial. She has been deprived of making phone calls or any leaves, permitted three days a month under the law for anyone who has served one-third of her sentence.
Mr. Jaafari complained that before Rouhani takes office, her daughters were allowed to visit their mother once a week, but now the visits have been restricted to half an hour, twice a month.
