Authorities did not agree to Ismail Abdi's leave; Haftsin's table was set in front of the prison
A number of teachers' union activists, along with his family, spread a Haftsin table in front of Karaj Central Prison to express solidarity with Ismail Abdi, a imprisoned member of the Teachers' Union, but this action was met with a reaction from prison authorities.
In addition, women teachers' union activists, including Nahid Fath-Alian, Zeinab Hamrang, Alia Eghmaddost, Masoumeh Asgari, and Haleh Safarzadeh, are in prison.
Following the prison authorities' refusal to grant Esmail Abdi a Nowruz leave, the family of the imprisoned teacher, along with a number of teachers' union activists, including Rasoul Badaghi and Aziz Ghasemzadeh, held a Nowruz ceremony in solidarity with him next to the Haftsin table and in front of the prison.
According to the Telegram channel of the Teachers' Union Coordination Council, moments later, some of the guard officers gathered in the crowd and demanded the dismantling of the Haftsin table, to which Abdi's family and friends responded by saying that their intention was only to remember Ismail Abdi and that they would leave the compound after the year was over. However, they were again met with opposition from prison officers.
However, Mohammad Hassan Poureh, a teacher and union activist, wrote in a tweet that due to the insistence of the teachers accompanying Ismail Abdi's family, and the restlessness of his eight-year-old daughter, the head of Karaj Central Prison allowed the Abdi family to meet with Ismail.
Ismail Abdi, who was planning to travel to Canada on July 26, 2015, as a representative of the Coordination Council of Teachers' Unions across the country to participate in the World Teachers' Summit, was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison.
This sentence ended on June 17, 2020; however, according to the Free Union of Iranian Workers, security forces removed another case they had filed for him in 2020 with a 10-year sentence from the archives and prevented his release.
Source: Voice of America
