Authorities Denied Ismail Abdi Furlough; Haft-Seen Table Spread in Front of Prison

A number of teacher activists spread a Haft-Seen table in front of the central prison in Karaj to express solidarity with Ismail Abdi, an imprisoned member of the Teachers’ Professional Association, along with his family, but this action was met with reactions from prison authorities.

Additionally, active female teacher activists including Nahid Fathollahian, Zeinab Hamrang, Aliyeh Eqdamdoost, Masoomeh Asgari, and Hale Safarzadeh are serving sentences in prison.

Following prison authorities’ refusal to grant Ismail Abdi a Nowruz furlough, this imprisoned teacher’s family, along with a number of teacher activists including Rasoul Badaghi and Aziz Ghassemzadeh, held a Nowruz ceremony in solidarity with him beside a Haft-Seen table in front of the prison.

According to the Telegram channel of the Coordinating Council of Teachers’ Professional Associations, moments later some guard officers arrived at the gathering and asked for the Haft-Seen table to be removed. Abdi’s family and friends responded that their only intention was to remember Ismail Abdi and they would leave the area after the New Year celebration. However, they still faced opposition from prison officials.

However, Mohammad Hassan Poureh, a teacher and activist, wrote in a tweet that with the persistence and insistence of teachers along with Ismail Abdi’s family, and the anxiety of his eight-year-old daughter, the head of the central prison in Karaj allowed Abdi’s family to visit him.

Ismail Abdi, who on July 27, 2015, intended to travel to Canada as a representative of the Coordinating Council of Teachers’ Professional Associations across the country to participate in the World Teachers’ Assembly, was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison.

This sentence ended on June 18, 2020; however, according to an announcement by the Free Workers’ Union of Iran, security forces retrieved another file from the archives that had been issued for him with a 10-year sentence in 2010 and prevented his release.

Source: Voice of America