Intelligence Ministry agents prevented memorial ceremony by his family
In the early hours of Monday, January 28, agents from the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), arrested Hassan Sadeqi (son of Gholam-Hossein Sadeqi, a member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran [PMOI/MEK] and a resident of Camp Liberty, who died in Baghdad last week), and his wife, Fatimah Mothana. The MOIS agents also confiscated their personal belongings, including their computers, family photos and books.
Mr. Sadeqi and Mrs. Mothana were both political prisoners during the 1980s.
The MOIS agents arrested their 17-year-old son, Nima, the next day, locked down their house and prevented other tenants of the building, who were their close relatives, from entering the site.The Sadeqi family was planning to hold a memorial service for Mr. Gholam-Hossein Sadeqi in that apartment. The Iranian regime is extremely fearful of any gathering linked in any way to the supporters or even relatives of the PMOI members.
Following four-decades of struggle against two dictatorships ruling Iran, and after enduring several years of illness and the harsh conditions at Ashraf and the Liberty Prison as well as the Iraqi government’s obstruction which denied him unhindered medical treatment, Mr. Sadeqi died of a heart attack on January 23, 2013.
Simultaneous with a series of criminal measures and the inhumane siege against the residents of Ashraf and Liberty by its proxies in Iraq, the Iranian regime has exerted a great deal of pressure on families of PMOI members. Presently, a large number of families of the residents of Ashraf and Liberty are imprisoned under harsh conditions for holding memorial services for their relatives, or making telephone contacts with or visiting their relatives. Despite suffering from acute or terminal illnesses, they have been deprived of the minimum medical treatment, resulting in their gradual death.
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international agencies and human rights bodies, especially the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the rapporteur for Arbitrary Detentions and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, to take urgent step in order to secure the immediate release of PMOI family members, particularly the relatives of Mr. Sadeqi.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 1, 2013
