An Iranian political prisoner died on Sunday, following abuse by the prison authorities that deprived him from getting the appropriate medical care that he needed.
Behnam Mahjoubi had been subjected to intense physical and psychological torture since his arrest earlier this year, which included being deprived of his epilepsy medication, even though it was provided by his family.
Despite his condition meaning that prison would be especially hard, the prison authorities refused to allow him out, even temporarily. Instead, they injected him with unknown drugs that actually caused his condition to get worse and led to him falling into a coma.
At that point, he was taken to Loghman Hospital, where he died just days later.
Maryam Rajavi, the opposition president, said: “What happened to Behnam Mahjoubi makes it imperative to send an international fact-finding mission to Iran to visit the prisons, political prisoners, and the detained protesters.”
This tragic tale is sadly far from unique. In fact, human rights abuses are systematic in Iran and many political prisoners have been killed by the authorities through the deprivation of medical care.
Read More:
Iran Executes Seven on Wednesday
One of them was Mohsen Dogmechi, a People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) supporter, who died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer. The prison authorities refused to send him to the hospital in the early stages of his illness, when treatment may well have helped, or release him into the care of his family.
There are also multiple political prisoners in Iran’s prisons right now who are dangerously ill and in need of proper medical treatment. This includes:
- Arash Sadeghi, who suffers from Chondrosarcoma
- 53-year-old MEK supporter Fatemeh Mosanna, who has been examined on several occasions by a doctor at Tehran’s Taleghani Hospital who said that Mosanna should be released. Authorities have consistently refused to give her furlough.
- Massoumeh Senobari was denied medical treatment by the authorities of the Central Prison of Tabriz earlier this month, even though she is suspected of having cancer.
These are just a few of the cases, but for each one mentioned, dozens more exist.
The Iranian Resistance wrote: “EU leaders should impose sanctions on the regime’s officials for their role in terrorism and human rights violations. The Iranian regime’s dossier of arbitrary executions, massacres of political prisoners, and killings of demonstrators should be referred to the UN Security Council, and its leaders should be brought to justice for four decades of crimes against humanity.
