Relatives are being forced to agree to the humiliating procedure before being permitted a 30-minute visit at the notorious jail 40km west of Tehran.
One political prisoner revealed: “All families who come to visit political prisoners in wards ten and 12, even women and children, are being photographed and fingerprinted.”
Fatemeh Alwandi, mother of political prisoner Mehdi Mahmoudian, added: “Why do they impose such pressure on us for a prison visit?
“It is as if four years of suffering for the family and the pressure brought to bear on parents, wives and children has not been enough, and now for a half an hour visit, all of our fingerprints are taken in this humiliating way.”
Mahmoudian was arrested in 2009 and spent three months in solitary confinement. He was one the journalists who exposed the appalling conditions in Kahrizak prison and was imprisoned for five years for talking to the media and revealing the names and number of those murdered, and insisting their burials had been illegal.
Kahrizak prison is also where some of the demonstrators in the 2009 uprising were taken, with many tortured to death.
Meanwhile prisoner Abolfazl Abedini is now said to be in a serious condition after 20 days of hunger strike at his transfer to Karoon prison, in south west Iran’s Khuzestan province.
He has endured repeated physical abuses after revealing how blogger Satar Beheshti was arrested, tortured and killed in 2012 offending the regime and the supreme leader on his website.
Forty-five political prisoners have now issued a statement in support Mr Abedini’s hunger strike.