A group of political prisoners in Ward 4 of Evin Prison staged a protest during their outdoor time.
The political prisoners in Ward 4 protested the sudden and forced transfer of 70-year-old political prisoner Mir Yousef Younesi to the ward for inmates convicted of non-political offenses, during which he was not even allowed to take his medication with him.
On Tuesday, May 6, 70-year-old political prisoner Mir Yousef Younesi was forcibly and without prior notice transferred from the political prisoners’ ward in Evin Prison to the ward housing inmates convicted of non-political crimes. This move provoked a strong reaction from his fellow inmates in Ward 4, who staged a sit-in in front of the guard office and the office of the head of the ward. The prisoners demanded Younesi’s immediate return to his original ward and protested the behavior of the ward chief.
The transfer of Younesi occurred as he was returning from a visitation area to his ward with his son, Ali Younesi, a political prisoner and an elite student at Sharif University of Technology. Prison guards, following orders from Hedayat Farzadi, the head of Evin Prison, violently separated the father and son and sent them to different locations. Security agents stated that an order had been issued prohibiting the two from being held in the same ward.
Mir Yousef Younesi has been imprisoned in Evin since January 2023. Despite his advanced age, he suffers from ailments such as diabetes and hearing loss but has been denied medical treatment. In total, he has spent more than 14 years in prison since the era of the former dictator Shah of Iran due to his support for the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
His son, Ali Younesi, has been detained since May 2020 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Under existing laws, Ali and another imprisoned elite student, Hossein Moradi, should have been eligible for sentence reduction after serving five years, but their release has been blocked so far.
