Heavy sentences and increased pressures on political prisoners and relatives of Ashraf residents continue in Iran
NCRI – The inhumane clerical regime in Iran is exerting more pressures on political prisoners and particularly relatives of members of the main opposition in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, by issuing heavy sentences against them.
• Maryam Akbari Monfared, a 36 year old mother of three toddlers, has been sentenced as “mohareb” (enemy of God) to 15 years imprisonment at Karaj’s Gohardasht prison, even though her case is completely empty. She has been imprisoned since December 31, 2009, at the solitary and public cells of Ward 209 of the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Ms. Akbari Monfared once voiced protest at a show trial calling the judge incompetent. According to the judge, Salamati, she is guilty because her relatives are in Camp Ashraf as members of the main opposition, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), while some of her other relatives were also PMOI members and have been executed by the regime for that reason. Four members of Ms. Akbari Monfared’s family have thus far been executed by the regime, including 20 year old Alireza and 26 year old Gholamreza in 1981, as well as Roqieh, 30, and Abdolreza, 23, who were slain during the massacre of political prisoners in 1988.
• 25 year old political prisoner Reza Joushan is being pressured to sign a form asking to be pardoned by the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. He suffers from acute illnesses, but the henchmen have made access to medical treatment conditional on his signing of the form. However, Reza has been resisting and protesting against the regime’s pressures. Reza and his mother, Ms. Zahra Asadzadeh Gorji, who is being held at Gohardasht prison in Karaj, have been banned from family visits for the past two months. The father of the family, 52 year old Mohammad-Salam Joushan, was also arrested on May 26, 2010 and transferred to Evin prison, but so far there is no information about his condition.
• Political prisoner Hamid Haeri, 57, has been sentenced to 15 years behind bars and exile to Gohardasht prison in Karaj. Last week, in protest to the regime’s pressures, he launched a dry hunger strike. Mr. Haeri also suffers from major afflictions, including heart disease, and has survived two strokes. He is in solitary confinement at Evin prison’s Ward 240, with his current physical condition unknown. He has been charged with “moharebeh” (waging war on God), as well as visiting his son in Camp Ashraf, supporting the PMOI, dispersing propaganda against the ruling establishment and numerous other charges. The regime’s officials have placed him under the cruelest forms of physical and psychological tortures during his time in detention and have threatened that they will also arrest his wife and daughter and take them to Kahrizak prison.
• Mohsen Dokmechi, a well-known and popular merchant and PMOI supporter, has been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment without having access to a defense lawyer and without being able to defend himself. He was detained in September 2009 because of his daughter’s presence in Camp Ashraf and also accused of providing financial support to the surviving families of the massacred 1988 political prisoners. Prior to this, Mr. Dokmechi had spent 7 years of his life in the regime’s medieval prisons in the 1980s on charges of supporting the PMOI.
These heavy sentences and increasing pressures on relatives of Ashraf residents come at a time when for the past four months, the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the terrorist Qods Force have, with the cooperation of the Iraqi government and armed forces, sent a number of their agents to the gates of Camp Ashraf in Iraq under the guise of families of the residents in order to place the residents under psychological torture and provoke disorder while setting the stage for the massacre of the residents.
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international human rights authorities and organizations, particularly the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other relevant UN bodies to enact urgent measures to immediately investigate the situation of political prisoners in Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
June 7, 2010
