Inmate Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, who has spent 13 months in solitary confinement enduring physical and psychological torture, is now said to be suffering from critical kidney and prostate problems and internal bleeding in his stomach.
He was first arrested with his brother on December 13, 2009, at his father’s house in Azerbaijan Province and sentenced to 15 years in prison by Judge Pir Abbasi, and has since staged three hunger strikes.
In Gohardasht prison, five other Azeri political prisoners have been on hunger strike for more than 20 days since July 13 in protest at their nine year sentences for ant-government propaganda and at the dire conditions in the prison.
One of their relatives said: “Every one of them has lost 12 to 15 kilos. They have turned pale and very weak. They demand a fair trial, a return to Tabriz and all of their belongings that were taken away from them while being transferred to Tehran.”
Political prisoner Abdullah Sadoughi is now in a critical condition after going on hunger strike in Tabriz Central Prison in support of the five Azeri activists. Prison officials have transferred him to solitary confinement instead rather than respond to his demands.
Sadoughi first went on a dry hunger strike in 2009 against his illegal arrest. The court had sentenced him to two years imprisonment with physical torture on charges of preventing state officials from drying Orumieh Lake and of threatening national security.
Also two more prisoners in Shoush Prison who had been on the 36th day of a hunger strike have suddenly disappeared, with no information on their whereabouts to their families who have now also been threatened with arrest.