Ali Moezzi, a political prisoner in Iran since 2008, and previously in the 1980s, had just a few months remaining on his most recent sentence. Last week, he was moved from the Gohardasht Prison in Karaj to the solitary cells of ward 209 of the infamous Evin Prison, where regime insiders say he will “be tormented to death.”
Evin Prison, located in northwestern Tehran, has a wing especially for political prisoners. Prisoners, many of them intellectuals, were held there both before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. There were so many intellectuals that it was nicknamed “Evin University.”
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a broad coalition of democratic Iranian organizations, reports that the regime’s intelligence operatives told Mr. Moezzi that they will “torment you to death and finish you off.” They told him he would not leave the prison alive.
The clerical regime has “tormented to death” and murdered many political prisoners.
Mr. Moezzi’s family, worried about his life have received no response from anyone in the Iranian intelligence service. His family is worried because Mr. Moezzi had a brother, Mohammad Moezzi, who was executed in 1981 because of his support for the PMOI.
Mr. Moezzi is suffering from acute renal problems and obstruction of the intestine, due to years of imprisonment and torture. Severe pain in his stomach caused him to become unconscious on September 30. His cellmates protested about a lack of care, and the regime transferred him to a hospital in Karaj, chaining his hand and leg to the hospital bed.
A week after being hospitalized, before his treatment was complete, he was returned to prison where he was deprived of any medical care. On October 12, rather than transferring him to the hospital for treatment, he was taken to Evin Prison in Tehran.
The reason for Mr. Ali Moezzi’s arrest in 2008 was that he visited his two children in Camp Ashraf. He was sentenced to two years in prison plus a three year suspended sentence, and he was released after the two years. In June 2011, he participated in the memorial ceremony for Mr. Ali Saremi, a political prisoner and supporter of the PMOI, who the clerical regime had executed. He was arrested for attending the funeral, and after a trial in absentia, branch 15 of the revolutionary court sentenced him to one year in prison, plus the three years that had been suspended from his previous sentence.
Mr. Ali Moezzi’s support for the PMOI and his support for the Iranian Resistance against the suppressive measures of the regime resulted in his being constantly under “the most severe physical and psychological pressures,” the Iranian Resistance says.
Calling on all human rights bodies, the Iranian Resistance is asking the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and the Rapporteurs on arbitrary detention and torture, to take action to save the life of this political prisoner.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is the organization that alerted the world to the Iranian regime’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme in 2002.
