The latest news from Iran says prison authorities have ramped up pressure on Maryam Akbari Monfared, a political prisoner for 12 years without a single day of leave.
Prison authorities have deprived Mrs. Akbari of visitation by her three daughters, claiming they want to prevent the Coronavirus from spreading. Nevertheless, they allow new arrivals into the prison wards without keeping them for the necessary time in the quarantine.
Six months after her violent exile to the Prison of Semnan, Maryam Akbari still does not have a telephone card. She can only call her family in the presence of a prison agent who frequently disconnects her calls, upsetting her and her family.
Ironically, no legal authority accepts the responsibility of sending Maryam Akbari into exile to Semnan Prison.
The Prosecutor’s Office, the Implementation of Verdicts Office, and the Assistant Prosecutor of Evin (Amin Vaziri) shirk the responsibility of sending Mrs. Akbari into exile. But the warden of Semnan Prison, Amir Asghar Alaii, says he has received orders to detain Maryam Akbari Monfared in his prison.
The latest information about the situation in the Prison of Semnan indicates that the sanitary conditions in this place are abysmal.
The Prison of Semnan lacks the minimum sanitary infrastructures. Inmates have no water to take a bath, and inmates take turns to bathe at every hour.
The prison’s sewage system has collapsed, but prison authorities have not taken any action to repair the damage. Instead, they have disconnected the siphons, adding to the sanitation problems in this prison.
Skin diseases are also widespread in the Semnan Prison that does not have any health facility and doctors to attend to the inmates.
Born in 1975, Maryam Akbari Monfared was arrested on December 31, 2009, after the uprising on December 27 that year which shook the pillars of the clerical regime in Iran.
In June 2010, the Revolutionary Court of Tehran handed down a 15-year prison sentence for Moharebeh on the alleged charge of “membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran,” a charge which Mrs. Akbari has never accepted. On March 9, 2021, she was violently sent to exile from the women’s ward of Evin Prison to the Prison of Semnan where she endures more pressure and restrictions.
Maryam Akbari’s sister and brother were executed during the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988. Another two of her brothers were executed during the mass executions in the early 1980s.
