Urgent Call for a Fact-Finding Mission to Iranian Prisons and the Release of Political Prisoners
Political prisoners in Ward 8 of Evin Prison are enduring disastrous conditions due to the deprivation of basic hygiene, food, medical services, and severe overcrowding. These actions carried out under the orders of the Ministry of Intelligence, include:
– Overcrowding of prisoners and lack of essential hygiene facilities, leading to infestations of bedbugs, cockroaches, and mice;
– Reducing food rations, stealing from prisoners’ portions, and intentionally starving them;
– Denying medical care, withholding medication, delaying transfers to hospitals, and not providing prisoners with their test results and medical reports;
– Threatening, insulting, beating, and transferring prisoners to solitary confinement on false pretexts, and cutting off visits and phone calls;
– Lack of a store to meet the needs of the large prisoner population;
– Distributing drugs through prison agents and personnel.
In Ghezel Hesar Prison, prisoners face continuous and prolonged water outages, preventing access to drinking water and bathing. The sanitary facilities are filthy and contaminated due to the lack of water, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks. By order of the prison warden, prisoners are forced to go outside for fresh air three times a day in the scorching summer sun. To further harass political prisoners, 13 of them are held in a ward with common criminals.
The Iranian Resistance urgently calls on the United Nations Council and High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and other relevant rapporteurs to condemn the inhumane treatment of political prisoners by the clerical regime and to take immediate action for their release. It also emphasizes the necessity of an international fact-finding mission to visit Iranian prisons and meet with prisoners, especially political prisoners.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
10 July 2024