Two Political Activists on Hunger Strike in Tabriz and Evin Prisons
Siamak Mirzaei and Habib Sassanian, two Turkish political activists imprisoned in Evin and Tabriz prisons, have been on hunger strike for more than two weeks.
Habib Sassanian was arrested last May along with five others on espionage charges. The General Prosecutor of East Azerbaijan Province identified them as members of the “separatist Gamo group” and stated that they “collected classified military and economic documents and made them available to enemies of the system.”
Eventually, all members of this group were released from Tabriz prison on bail except for Habib Sassanian, who remains detained in Ward 12 of Tabriz Prison.
Nagi Mahmoudi, a human rights lawyer based in Germany and former legal representative for some civil activists, told Radio Farda that “despite several court sessions held in the second branch of Tabriz Revolutionary Court under the presidency of Hamid Bagherpour, no verdict has yet been issued for Habib Sassanian. Sassanian is on his seventeenth day of protest hunger strike, enduring poor physical conditions in Tabriz Prison. In recent days, due to his deteriorating health condition, he has been transferred to the prison’s medical clinic several times.”
Siamak Mirzaei was also sentenced to ten years in prison and two years exile in Torbat-e Heydarieh on charges of “forming associations and groups to disrupt the country’s security” in the Baharestan Revolutionary Court under the presidency of Bahram Hassani (Head of the Judiciary and Special Judge of the Baharestan Revolutionary Court).
Mahmoudi says that Siamak Mirzaei’s lawyer filed an appeal against the verdict, but no decision has been communicated by the appellate court to either Siamak Mirzaei or his lawyer regarding the confirmation or annulment of the original ruling.
Detained since June 2016 in Parsabad Moghan and transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison, he announced through an open letter that “due to repeated obstruction in the process of investigating my case, until such time as the bail imposed is reduced and adjusted, and until the case file is completed for an appellate hearing, I will begin a hunger strike starting Sunday, June 17, 2017.”
Mahmoudi considers the hunger strike of these two Azerbaijani prisoners in Tabriz and Evin prisons “legitimate” in light of their violated rights, and believes that “when a prisoner loses faith in legal mechanisms, he resorts to his last weapon, which is his own life.”
Source: Radio Farda
