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At least 120 prisoners were confirmed to have tested positive for coronavirus in Rajai Shahr Prison. Political prisoners are also among those contracted Covid-19.

Prisoner of conscience Farhad Meysami has tested positive for the virus at Rajaei Shahr prison in the city of Karaj and was transferred from his ward to a so-called prison “safe room” for isolation.

A 50-year-old physician, Farhad Meysami was arrested by agents of the Intelligence Ministry on July 31, 2018, for allegedly having badges in his home with the slogan “I am against compulsory hijab.”

He has been sentenced to six years imprisonment and banned from leaving the country or engaging in online activities for one year for peacefully protesting the regime’s compulsory hijab law.

Some 45 Sunni prisoners in Rajaei Shahr Prison have previously contracted the virus and the authorities denied them adequate medical treatment. The condition of a number of the infected Sunni prisoners, including; Farhad Salimi, Khosro Besharat, Abdul Jabbar Hosseini, Farzad Shahnazari, Abdollah Shariati and Borhan Asgharian are worse than the others.

The Coronavirus has plagued all Iranian prisons. The clerical regime, however, continues to transfer female activists to jail. It refuses to grant leave to political prisoners.

In the few cases where it has granted leaves, the regime refrains from extending them and has summoned the prisoners back.

Aliyeh Motallebzadeh and Ashraf Nafariyeh were transferred to the Evin Prison on October 11, 2020.

Motallebzadeh is a photographer by profession and a women’s rights activist who chairs the Association to Defend Freedom of the Press.
Ashraf Nafariyeh is a student activist.

Ms. Motalllebzadeh was first summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence on November 26, 2016. The authorities temporarily released her on a bail of 300 million Tomans, on December 19.

Iran’s legendary singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian passed away at 80, after a long bout with cancer. Thousands of people packed the streets outside the hospital where he died. The memorial for Shajarian turned into an anti-regime protest as people chanted “death to the dictator,” “death to Khamenei,” “May the dictator die, Shajarian will never die,” and “State TV is our national disgrace.”

Women were remarkably daring in leading the chants against the regime’s supreme leader.

The State Security Forces (SSF) intervened to prevent the spread of the protests. To disperse the crowd, they used tear gas and brutalized the protesters. By the end of the night, the regime slowed down and cut off the internet to prevent spread of the news of protests.

After prayers on the body of Iran’s iconic singer, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, his casket was taken to the airport to be flown to Mashhad, his birthplace.

The clerical regime’s security forces have arrested another four female labor and social media activists over the past days.

Agents of the IRGC Intelligence in western province of Ilam arrested Khadijeh Mehdipour for her activities on the Instagram.

Agents of the IRGC Intelligence broke into her home on October 5, 2020 and arrested her. Khadijeh Mehdipour is presently detained in the general women’s quarantine ward in the Central Prison of Ilam. She does not have access to a lawyer and is deprived of her other basic rights.

Ms. Mehdipour was born in 1987 and resides in Ilam-e Gharb. She has lost both her parents and lives with her uncle.

Security forces also arrested Shabnam Ashouri at her home in Tehran on October 6, 2020. They ransacked the house and confiscated her personal belongings.

Shabnam Ashouri was born in 1987 and is married. She is the managing editor and producer of Agahnameh magazine which deals with issues and problems of Iranian workers.

Political prisoner Massoumeh Senobari has contracted the Coronavirus in the women’s ward of the Central Prison of Tabriz.
Prison authorities do not isolate or quarantine the inmates who contract the virus. So, other detainees in proximity of the infected inmates risk getting infected.

An informed source said Massoumeh Senobari has bad coughs. She suffers from high fever, sore throat, dry mouth, pain in the lungs and all over her body.

Ms. Senobari was viciously tortured after being arrested. She already suffered from blurred vision, fracture of her right leg bone and other physical problems. But prison authorities denied her medical leave.
The family of Massoumeh Senobari asked the authorities for a second time to grant her leave for medical treatment. But they did not succeed in getting their request.

Mostafa Hashemizadeh, a student at Tehran University, was summoned Friday to Evin Court to begin serving his sentence of six years in prison and 74 lashes.

Branch 26 of Tehran’s revolutionary court had sentenced Mostafa Hashemizadeh, a civil engineering student at the University of Tehran, to 5 years in prison on a charge of “assembly and collusion to disrupt national security.” In a tweet on May 1, he said that the court sentenced him to an additional year in prison, three months of public service at a mental hospital, and 74 lashes, and banned him from entering the university dormitory for 2 years for “disrupting public order.”

The court sentenced Amir Mohammad Sharifi, another University of Tehran student who attended the protests, to six months in prison for engaging in “propaganda against the state.” Sharifi said the charge stemmed from his taking of photos of plainclothes officers entering the university dorm and taking away the belongings of Mostafa Hashemzadeh and posting the photos on Twitter.

Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian has been relocated from the Central Prison of Kerman to the notorious Dieselabad Prison of Kermanshah, western Iran.

Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian had been detained for three months in solitary confinement in the quarantine ward of the Central Prison of Kerman in southern Iran. She was eventually relocated to Kermanshah Prison on September 24, 2020.

Zeinab Jalalian was abruptly taken out of the Prison of Khoy on April 28, 2020. She was transferred to Qarchak Prison in Varamin.

Her family said prison agents had cuffed her hands and feet, taking her from one prison to the other for two days without giving her enough food or water. She was taken to Urmia and Kermanshah, and subsequently to the Evin Courthouse. Then, she was taken to Qarchak Prison.

With another execution carried out at dawn on Wednesday, September 23, 2020, the number of women executed in Iran reached 108 during Rouhani’s tenure as the president of Iran.

Iran’s Judiciary hanged Mahtab Shafii, 32, at dawn in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, also known as Rajaiishahr prison.

Mahtab Shafii had been detained for seven years in Qarchak Prison on the charge of murder.

None of the regime’s official agencies have announced the news of execution of Mahtab Shafii by the time this news is being published.

There are more women on the death row in the Central Prison of Urmia.

Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been transferred to hospital from Evin Prison.

Having suffered heart problems on Saturday, September 19, 2020, Nasrin Sotoudeh was transferred to Tehran’s Taleghani Hospital.

No further information is available on her conditions.

Nasrin Sotoudeh has been on hunger strike since August 11, 2020, and her physical condition is further deteriorating with every passing day.