NCRI – According to reports, two imprisoned artists, Mehdi and Hossein Rajabian, who are incarcerated in Evin prison in Tehran, staged a hunger strike since Wednesday September 7 to protest against prison officials’ decision to change their ward and separate them from each other.
Evin prison officials, following a verbal argument between the two brothers with the prosecutor overseeing the prison, separated them to punish and put pressure on them.
A close relative of these two prisoners said: “Last night, Mehdi was forcibly transferred to ward 8 and Hossein is still in ward 7 of Evin prison. The two brothers staged a hunger strike in protest and demanded that they be together.”
The two musician and filmmaker brothers were first sentenced to 6 years imprisonment each and a heavy fine by the regime’s court presided by the notorious Judge Moghiseh on the bogus charges of “Insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the system,” but at the appeal court in Tehran, their sentences were reduced to three years in prison, three year probation and 200 million rials fine.
According to an informed source, they were under pressure during the interrogations for televised confession and the interrogators threatened them to confess otherwise they would be sentenced to life imprisonment.
It should be points out that the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Friday 24 June 2016 called for the immediate release of imprisoned musicians and filmmakers in Iran.
The office of UN High Commissariat for Human Rights reported that Karima Bennoune, the UN special rapporteur on cultural rights, and David Key, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, on June 24 urged Iranian regime to release the Iranian musicians, Mehdi Rajabian and Yousef Emadi, and filmmaker Hossein Rajabian who have been sentenced to prison and a heavy fine since early June.
The UN Rapporteurs concluded that the arrest and convictions of these artists are totally unacceptable and a gross violation of international human rights law, and the detainees should be released immediately and all charges against them should be dropped.
