A Year and a Half Has Passed Since Imprisoned Physician Ahmadreza Jalali’s Protest Against Execution Sentence; No One Is Accountable

The wife of Ahmadreza Jalali, an Iranian-Swedish physician imprisoned in Iran, says that despite presenting completely accurate and irrefutable evidence of her husband’s innocence, “unfortunately, no one is held accountable for the unjust sentence issued against him, and he remains at risk of execution.”

Vida Mehranniya, the wife of Ahmadreza Jalali, told Voice of America on Friday, June 30, that more than a year and a half has passed since this imprisoned physician’s retrial in Iran; however, the status of the case and the issued sentence remain unchanged, and no responsible official has provided clear answers to her and his lawyers.

Ms. Mehranniya states that the continued lack of information about her husband’s case status occurs while the vast majority of judicial officials and even security authorities are completely certain of his innocence and the error of the death sentence issued, yet no one is willing to acknowledge this mistake and rectify the injustice.

Mr. Jalali was arrested in 2016 when he traveled from Sweden to Iran to visit his family. Iran’s Revolutionary Court convicted him of transferring confidential information to Mossad at the height of Iran’s nuclear program activities and sentenced him to execution. The Supreme Court rejected a request for review of the sentence in less than an hour.

Ms. Mehranniya, expressing concern about Mr. Jalali’s physical condition, told Voice of America that given all the concerns about the spread of coronavirus and COVID-19 and its expansion in Iran’s prisons, and despite Mr. Jalali’s multiple illnesses, including immune deficiency and gastrointestinal disease, and reduced blood cells that greatly increase the risk of coronavirus infection, judicial authorities have so far not responded to Mr. Jalali’s requests, his lawyers’ requests, and the United Nations Human Rights Council’s request for his release on furlough, and he remains imprisoned.

The wife of this imprisoned physician also described the prison’s health conditions as highly unsatisfactory and said that the only chance for Ahmadreza Jalali and his cellmates amid the spread of coronavirus is that they are held in maximum-security conditions and are even deprived of basic services such as access to the library, and this isolation may help them in these circumstances.

Currently, in addition to Ahmadreza Jalali, several other American and non-American citizens imprisoned in Iran, including Ares Amiri, Siamak and Baquer Namazi, have not been released on furlough to date despite the spread of COVID-19 and remain at risk of infection with this virus.

The prevention of the release of these prisoners and some other political prisoners is occurring while the spread of coronavirus in Iran has not been completely controlled, and news about the spread of this virus is continuously published by human rights news agencies in Iran’s prisons. The officials of the Islamic Republic also officially announced by Friday, June 30, that until this date, 146,668 people had been infected with this virus and 7,677 people had lost their lives due to infection.

Although the actual numbers are far greater than the figures announced by Islamic Republic officials, and they do not provide information about the actual number of those infected and the dead. Previously, an official from the World Health Organization had said that the figures announced by Iranian authorities about coronavirus infections are only one-fifth of actual infections.

Source: Voice of America