US Congressman: Iran should heed UN call for Zeinab Jalalian's release

A senior US Congressman tweeted about the inadequate conditions of Iranian Kurdish prisoner Zeinab Jalalian.

Jimmy Raskin, Representative for Maryland's 8th District in the US House of Representatives, tweeted on Tuesday evening, October 25: "Zeinab Jalalian has been imprisoned in Iran on trumped-up charges for 13 years for advocating for the rights of Kurds and Iranian women. Now those who have imprisoned her have denied her basic health care in order to extract a confession from her."

He added: "Iran should heed the United Nations' call for his unconditional release."

In April of this year, Amnesty International, while publishing the names and pictures of a group of political prisoners in Iran, said in relation to Zeinab Jalalian that she had been repeatedly subjected to "torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment, and her access to medical services was conditioned on forced confessions."

Zeinab Jalalian is from Maku County. She was arrested in Kermanshah in March 2007. The Iranian judiciary initially sentenced her to death and then to life imprisonment on appeal on charges of war and membership in a Kurdish party.

Forced and violent confessions by Iranian security forces have been reported many times before. This method of obtaining confessions, which has been repeatedly criticized by human rights groups, continues to be used by the Islamic Republic's judiciary.

Some of these forced confessions of detainees, such as those of Maziar Bahari, Maziar Ebrahimi, Sepideh Gholian, Ebrahim Bakhshi, Saeed Malekpour, and dozens of others, have been broadcast on official Iranian television channels. Human rights organizations say the Islamic Republic does not handle charges fairly and that innocent people have sometimes been tried and even executed.

The US State Department has repeatedly and on various occasions condemned the violent confrontations and widespread repression of protesters, as well as the repeated and persistent violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the Islamic Republic regime.

Source: Voice of America