The Revolutionary Court of Tehran issued 60 months in prison for four female political prisoners serving their sentences in the notorious Qarchak Prison.
Reports on December 16, 2021, indicate that the Revolutionary Court of Tehran issued a total of 60 months of jail term for Parastoo Mo’ini, Zahra Safaei, Forough Taghipour, and Marzieh Farsi. The court had convened on November 24, 2021.
The authorities of Qarchak Prison fabricated a new case for the four female political prisoners because they sent out a letter in June, calling for the boycott of the clerical regime’s sham presidential election. Each of them has been sentenced to an additional 15 months in prison.
The four political prisoners have received other sentences, including cleaning deserted areas for four months, writing a 40-page thesis on the crimes committed by the opposition PMOI/MEK, two years ban on leaving the country, and confiscation of their belongings.
Of the four female political prisoners, only Parastoo Mo’ini had attended the trial on November 24. The prisoners’ lawyers were not present in the court, either. Therefore, the court issued its verdict in absentia. The presiding judge, Afshari, warned Ms. Mo’ini that he would send her to exile in a remote area.
Detained for supporting the opposition PMOI/MEK
The four female political prisoners are supporters of the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
Parastoo Mo’ini, 21, is a student of computer sciences. She is detained in Qarchak Prison and her mother, Zahra Safaei, held despite dire health.
Parastoo’s grandfather, Hassan Ali Safaei, was a political prisoner under both dictatorships of the Shah and the mullahs. He was executed in 1981 in Evin Prison.
Security forces arrested Parastoo Moini and her mother, Zahra Safaei, in Tehran on February 24, 2020. They also arrested Forough Taghipour and her mother, Nasim Jabbari. They were subsequently transferred to the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center (Ward 209 of Evin Prison). Parastoo Mo’ini and Forough Taghipour were transferred to Qarchak Prison in early March 2020.
Zahra Safaei, Parastoo Mo’ini, and Forough Taghipour are serving their prison sentences of eight, six, and five years. Marzieh Farsi is illegally detained without standing trial.
The lives of the four female political prisoners are in danger in Qarchak Prison. The prison authorities had previously hired mercenaries to kill them by attacking them and pouring boiling water. In another vicious attack on December 13, 2020, some 20 prison guards attacked the ward of these political prisoners and brutalized all of them.
On July 26, 2021, Parastoo Mo’ini was threatened by her interrogator: “The situation may be like 1988 again!”
1988 is a reference to the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988.
“If we do not execute you, we will make you wish to be executed,” he told the prisoner in another part of his threats.
