Another Political Prisoner in Danger
Shirin Karimi
Roozonline:
06 Sep 2006

Alarming reports continue about the condition of political prisoners in Iran. While Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi is reported to be in serious condition, the wife of Ahmad Batebi, another student political prisoner, has petitioned the UN Secretary General to investigate her husband’s situation.

Alarming reports continue about the condition of political prisoners in Iran. While Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi is reported to be in serious condition, the wife of Ahmad Batebi, another student political prisoner, has petitioned the UN Secretary General to investigate her husband’s situation. According to the student committed of the Gozareshgarane Hogoogh Bashar organization (Human Rights Reporters) and in the words of a security official of Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj, “Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi has suffered a heart and brain disorders after 9 days of his hunger strike.” According to the same report, from early Sunday hours, prison officials have refrained from responding to questions about Mahdavi’s health, who is said to have been transferred to a hospital.
Under these tense conditions, the words of Bahramian the defense attorney for Akbar Mohammadi who died in prison a month ago, ring a bell: “They intend to physically get rid of these students.”
Taking advantage of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s presence in Tehran, Ahmad Batebi’s wife wrote him a letter in which she describes her husband’s plight and says he is being kept in an undisclosed location. “He has spent 6 years of the best part of his life in prison. Prison tortures and psychological pressures on him have been so brutal that Batebi now has chronic physical disorders. His condition was so bad that after 6 years he was allowed to take leave from prison last year for medical treatment. Then unexpectedly armed agents showed up at our house and after searching it, arrested my husband and took him to prison again, while also confiscating much of our personal property. After this, my husband went on a hunger strike in protest of his unwarranted re-arrest. His condition now threatens his life. My husband’s physician Dr. Hesam Firuzi has reported that unless his hunger strike is ended and he received medical treatment outside prison, his life will remain under threat. Over a month passes since my husband’s re-arrest and my letters and pleas from prison, judiciary and other officials of the Islamic Republic have produced no results, and my husband continues to be in solitary confinement. I have succeeded in visiting him only two times, and on both occasions his physical and psychological condition was troubling. My husband lacks the most fundamental civil rights, is not allowed to contact his lawyer, while judiciary officials have not announced the cause of his re-arrest. He has also been denied access to medical specialists.”
In her letter, Batebi’s wife mentions the fate of Akbar Mohammadi, another student activist prisoner who died a month ago in prison through his hunger strike and expresses her concern that her husband’s fate may be similar to his.