Imprisoned Women Subjected to Beatings, Communication Restrictions, and Threats of Internal Exile and New Charges
On Wednesday, December 27, 2023, Ali Al-Qasimehr, the Head of Tehran’s Department of Justice and the former Prosecutor of Tehran, alongside two notorious judges –Iman Afshari and Mohammad Reza Amouzad– as well as several prison authorities, interrogators, and torturers, visited the women’s ward of Evin Prison. Notably, Iman Afshari, a notorious judge, has sentenced numerous women political prisoners to lengthy prison terms and additional punishments, including flogging.
Multiple women prisoners protested their oppressive sentences and continued detention without trial. They chanted slogans against the mullahs’ regime and objected to the presence of criminal authorities within the women’s ward.
Following this, prison guards forcefully entered the ward, brutally assaulting the prisoners and escorting the judicial authorities away. The prison administration disconnected the political prisoners’ telephone lines and issued threats of filing new charges against them. Additionally, they menaced the prisoners with internal exile to various locations, including the deprived province of Sistan and Baluchistan in southeast Iran.
Some supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), who are among the political prisoners in the women’s ward of Evin Prison, are:
- Shiva Esmaili: She was arrested on March 11, 2023. Mullah Iman Afshari sentenced her to 10 years in prison. Ms. Esmaili is suffering from cancer. Her son, Mehdi Vafaei, is also imprisoned for being a supporter of the PMOI/MEK.
- Sudabeh Fakharzadeh: She was arrested on March 11, 2023, and sentenced to five years in prison by Iman Afshari.
- Zeinab Hamrang: She was arrested on March 11, 2023, and Iman Afshari sentenced her to five years in prison.
- Fereshteh Nouri: She was arrested on July 3, 2023, and sentenced to five years in prison.
- Azar Mousazadeh Karvandi: She was arrested on July 30, 2023, and sentenced to five years.
- Zahra Safaei: She was arrested on September 12, 2023, and sentenced to five years in prison. She is suffering from a heart condition. Ms. Safaei is the daughter of Haj Hassan Ali Safaei, a political prisoner under the Shah who was executed by the clerical regime in 1981. Her sister is at Ashraf-3 in Albania.
- Maryam Banou Nassiri: She was arrested in April 2023 and sentenced to three years and seven months of prison.
- Arghavan Fallahi: She was arrested on November 3, 2022, and has been detained since without standing trial. She was arrested along with her father and brother, who are also imprisoned in Evin.
- Parvin Mir-Asan: She was arrested on November 3, 2022, but has not stood trial yet.
- Marzieh Farsi: She was arrested on August 21, 2023, and is set to be tried on the charge of “sedition.” She has cancer. Her brother, Hassan Farsi, was executed during the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. Another brother and two sisters of hers are in Ashraf-3.
- Forough Taghipour: She was arrested in September 2023 and is set to be tried on the fabricated charge of “sedition.” Her father and sister are in Ashaf-3.
- Nasim Gholami Fard: She was arrested in September 2023 and is set to be tried on the fabricated charge of “sedition,” which is punishable by the death penalty or heavy prison sentences.
- Elaheh Fouladi: She was arrested on December 12, 2023, and has not yet stood trial. Her brother, Manouchehr Fouladi, was killed by the regime during the PMOI’s Eternal Light operation in the summer of 1988.
The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, the UNSR on the situation of human rights in Iran, the UNSR on violence against women and girls, and all authorities advocating human rights and women’s rights, to decisively condemn the brutality of the mullahs’ misogynous regime, especially against female political prisoners. The NCRI Women’s Committee urges the UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran to visit the country’s prisons and interview the prisoners.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran – Women’s Committee
December 29, 2023
