“Prisoners’ protest against the execution of Reza Rasaei led to a violent crackdown by prison guards and security officers,” Mohammadi’s family said in a statement. File | Photo credit: Reuters
“Guards beat female prisoners during clashes that broke out in Tehran’s Evin prison following a wave of executions,” the family of jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said, raising new concerns about her health.
Rights activist Ms Mohammadi, 52, who won the 2023 prize for her campaign against the death penalty, among other things, has been in prison since November 2021 and has spent much of the past decade in and out of prison.
Ms Mohammadi’s Paris-based family insisted they had had no direct contact with her since her right to call was stopped in November.
But it said it had heard from several other families of detainees in Evin that clashes broke out on Tuesday when the female prisoners protested in the courtyard against the executions.
About 30 convicts were hanged this week, according to rights groups, including Gholamreza (Reza) Rasaei, who Iran’s judiciary said was executed on Tuesday in connection with the 2022 protests.
“Prisoners’ protest against the execution of Reza Rasaei led to a violent crackdown by prison guards and security officers,” Mohammadi’s family said in a statement late Thursday, citing the reports. “Several women who stood before the security forces were severely beaten. The confrontation escalated, resulting in physical injuries to some prisoners.â€
The family said that after being hit in the chest, Mohammadi suffered a breathing attack and severe chest pain, causing her to collapse and pass out on the ground in the prison courtyard.
She was bruised and treated in the prison infirmary, but was not transferred to an outside hospital. “We are very concerned about her health and well-being under these circumstances,” the family said. Iranian prison authorities denied that prisoners had been beaten and blamed the prisoners for the confrontation.
Two prisoners “had palpitations due to the stress,” but medical examinations showed that their general condition was “favourable,” police said. Tasnim news agency.
Relatives and sympathizers had raised new concerns about Mohammadi’s condition earlier this month, saying they had been informed of the results of medical tests carried out in July “which showed a worrying deterioration in her health”.
For the past eight months, Mohammadi has suffered from acute back and knee pain, including a hernia. In 2021, a stent was placed on her main coronary artery due to a blockage.
Mohammadi has continued to campaign even behind bars, strongly supporting the protests that broke out across Iran following the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested for allegedly following the strict had violated the Islamic Republic’s dress code for women. .
Mohammadi was given a new one-year prison sentence in June for “propaganda against the state,” on top of a litany of other sentences that already amounted to 12 years and three months in prison, 154 lashes, two years of exile and various social penalties. and political restrictions.
