Political Prisoners Attacked in Iran’s Qarchak Prison

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Iran’s Qarchak Prison
Iran’s Qarchak Prison

By Jubin Katiraie

Two female political prisoners in Qarchak Prison were attacked on Monday by hired goons brandishing boiling water.

Forough Taghipour and Parastoo Mo’ini, who are currently held in Ward 6, would have been scalded or worse by two women hired by the Qarchak Prison warden Mehdi Mohammadi, had it not been for the other selfless inmates who rushed to their aid and ended up getting burned themselves.

The two women hired by the warden have been named as Zeinab Ghanbarnejad (a.k.a. Zeinab Saratani) and Narges Amir Ali.

Mo’ini and her mother Zahra Safaei were previously threatened and harassed multiple times over the past few weeks by the ordinary prisoners of Qarchak Prison, who were hired by the warden.

The reason is that Iranian authorities are currently doing whatever they can to harm (or even kill) political prisoners and detained protesters with the hopes of intimidating the Iranian people and discouraging them from taking part in future protests against the regime.

The regime is incredibly weak, so it fears the rightful backlash for outright executing political prisoners as they did in the past. Instead, if they can’t pin a bogus murder charge on them and execute them for that, as happened to Mostafa Salehi on August 5, and wrestling champion Navid Afkari on September 12, they will kill them through other means:

  • denial of medical treatment
  • unhygienic environment, especially during the coronavirus pandemic
  • refusing furlough to non-violent offenders during the pandemic
  • sending dangerous criminals to attack and kill them

Following Afkari’s execution, prison authorities threatened to kill all of those held on  Ward 5 of the Great Tehran Penitentiary – mainly protesters arrested in the November 2019 uprising – because of the international outrage campaign that sprung up after Afkari’s sentencing was not enough to save him.

The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has reiterated a call by the Iranian Resistance for international human rights groups and advocates to take urgent action to save political prisoners in Iran.

They wrote: “The lives of political prisoners, particularly the female political prisoners in Qarchak Prison Zahra Safaei, Parastoo Mo’ini and Forough Taghipour, are in danger, demanding urgent intervention to secure their immediate release.”

The Iranian Resistance has previously called for an international delegation to visit Iran’s prisons to see the conditions for themselves and meet with prisoners, particularly political prisoners, to prevent another bloodshed.

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