NCRI Staff
NCRI – An Iranian political prisoner is refusing urgent hospital treatment for a ruptured gallbladder in protest at her disgusting treatment by the Iranian Regime
Atena Daemi, who was sentenced to seven years in jail on bogus charges, was told that in order to have her operation, she would have to remain handcuffed and shackled whilst in hospital.
When she refused, she was taken back to the notorious Evin Prison on Monday, September 25, without treatment.
Her mother, Massoumeh Nemati, said: “I do not understand how a prisoner, who has been imprisoned for her beliefs, could escape from the hospital? Where can she escape to?”
Indeed, people recovering from surgery or those in desperate need of surgery are rarely able to climb out of a hospital window and shimmy down the side of the building.
Nemati also explained that her daughter had been banned from having a relative attend the hospital for moral support.
Tehran’s Prosecutor, Haj Moradi, had previously met with Atena’s father and promised that Atena would not be restrained and would be allowed to receive visitors, but when the family spoke to Moradi afterwards, he pretended there was nothing he could do.
Atena’s renal and gallbladder problems were first diagnosed back in April- when they were relatively minor- but thanks to a lack of medical care from the Regime, they have developed into a life-threatening condition.
At the beginning of September, doctors said that even with the operation, she would still be at serious risk of infection.
Atena visited a doctor in April at the tail-end of her 54-day hunger strike over the Regime’s treatment of political prisoners and was diagnosed with initial precipitation of gallstones and primitive infection of the kidneys, for which she should have been immediately hospitalised.
The Regime officials, however, accused her of faking her illness (even though she was vomiting bile and suffering from fever and nausea) and refused to allow her to be hospitalised. hey ordered a second opinion from a doctor who would side with the Regime, who dismissed any need for surgery and even gave her the wrong type of antibiotics.
The head of Evin’s dispensary, Abbas Khani, even filed charges against Atena for protesting her condition and “insulting officials”. This is despite the fact that specialist doctors at Iran Coroner’s Office have already confirmed Atena’s condition.
While Atena is officially important for ‘assembly, collusion and propaganda against the regime’, ‘blasphemy and insulting Khamenei’, and ‘concealing evidence of crime’, many human rights organizations believe that she was convicted based on her criticisms of the death penalty, her visits to the graves of activists murdered by the Regime for protesting the outcome of the 2009 presidential election, and her reports about political prisoners.
