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Maryam Akbari Monfared started her 12th year in prison on Wednesday, 30 December. She is a political prisoner jailed in Evin prison since 2009 without one day of furlough.

Maryam Akbari was arrested at 3 a.m. on 30 December 2009, after the major upheavals on December 27 that year which nearly toppled the clerical regime.

In June 2010, the 15th Branch of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 15 years in prison on the charge of “Moharebeh (waging war on God) through membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran,” a charge which she never accepted.

She was detained for nine months in solitary confinement in the Intelligence Ministry Ward 209, the Methadone Ward and the women’s ward of Evin Prison. She was relocated to Gohardasht (Rajaishahr) Prison in October 2010 and subsequently moved to the notorious Qarchak Prison in April 2011.

Three prisoners have died in Evin Prison in Tehran in the period between 24 & 28 December. The three prisoners suffered from the COVID-19 but they had been abandoned by Evin dispensary officials without any medical treatment.

On Monday, 28 December, Amir Hossein Mottaghian died of COVID-19 in Ward 4 of Evin Prison. He fell down on the ground and went unconscious. He died after being transferred to the dispensary. The clinic officials said he had died of heart stroke.

He had referred to the dispensary on 27 December, and asked for treatment, but the clinic authorities had sent him out. After 24 hours, he fainted and his fellow inmates took him to the dispensary but it was too late.

Prisoners protested his death due to lack of medical treatment, but the prison’s doctor and clinic authorities dealt badly with the protesting prisoners.

Based on the report from Evin Prison, Prison guards brutalized political prisoner Afshin Shahsavari. The guards continued to beat him even after he went unconscious due to the severity of beatings.

Apparently, political prisoner Afshin Shahsavari was brutalized just because of his support for ordinary prisoners in the quarantine. Prison guards beat him in the head and face. That is why he went unconscious. He suffered a broken skull. He also suffered fracture in his eyebrow. His shoulder blade was dislocated and his body was bruised. He is presently abandoned in Evin Prison’s quarantine in critical conditions.

Jalal Mobini, Mehdi Mahmouli, and another guard by the last name of Amrollahi, are three prison guards involved in this brutal treatment.

A second death sentence has been issued for political prisoner Shaker Behrouz based on a new cased filed against him. Mr. Behrouz is presently detained in the Central Prison of Urmia.

The First Branch of the Penal Court of Urmia issued the second death sentence on Saturday, December 26, for political prisoner Shaker Behrouzi on the charge of murdering Mamel Mohammadi, an IRGC member.

His trial was held on Wednesday, 9 December 2020.
Shaker Behrouzi, 32, is single and comes from Dizej of Urmia.

The family of the victim do not have any complaints against Shaker Behrouz and do not believe that he is the murderer. They have even declared that they are ready to testify about this in any court. But intelligence services have threatened to withdraw the aid granted to the family of the victim, who was an IRGC member, if they do not complain against Shaker Behrouz.

On the other hand, 12 other citizens from Dizej village are also prepared to testify that Mr. Shaker Behrouz was in his shop at the time of murder and he was not at the site of murder.

Golrokh Iraee violently transferred to the notorious Ward 2A of Evin Prison.

Political prisoner Golrokh Iraee has been violently removed from Qarchak Prison and taken by force to the IRGC Intelligence Ward 2A in Evin Prison.
Prison guards brutalized Golrokh Iraee by stun guns on Sunday, December 13, 2020.

Ms. Iraee had previously refused to go to Ward 2A when she was first summoned on December 7 by the IRGC Intelligence, without mentioning any reason. She said her summon was illegal since she was serving her sentence in Qarchak Prison.

The IRGC Intelligence said Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee must be transferred for one week to Ward 2A of Evin Prison to undergo investigations.

Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi are still detained in the Intelligence Ministry Ward 209 of Evin Prison in a bid to force them into making confessions against themselves.

Both young men are under torture and have been brought under added pressure to make false confessions.

Eight months since their arrest, the two elite students are under the pressure of the Intelligence Ministry to express remorse and appear on television.

The case of these two students was referred to Branch 29 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in November 2020, but the two elite students are still detained in Ward 209 of Evin Prison.

According to NCRI: The United Nations made public the text of a communication by seven human rights experts calling on the Iranian regime to account for the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran.
In their communication to the Iranian regime on September 3, 2020, the UN experts expressed serious concern over the alleged continued refusal to disclose the fate and whereabouts of thousands of individuals who were reportedly forcibly disappeared and then extra judicially executed in 1988.
The UN Special Rapporteurs gave the Iranian authorities 60 days to clarify all the cases brought to their attention. After 60 days, they said the communication and any response received would be made public via the communications reporting website. They will all be subsequently made available in the usual report to be presented to the Human Rights Council.

According to the reports: Flash floods devastate 12 Iranian provinces – two women die in Bushehr

Heavy flash floods devastated 12 Iranian provinces, a product of the clerical regime’s inaction and destruction of the country’s infrastructures.

By December 8, 2020, floods engulfed at least 12 Iranian provinces including Khuzestan, Fars, Isfahan, Yazd, Kerman, Bushehr, Lorestan, Chahar Mahal-o Bakhtiari, Hormozgan, Gilan, and Sistan and Baluchestan, and inflicted heavy damages on the residents. At least 55 million people have been affected by the flash floods.

People’s homes are immersed in water. Women and children have gone on the roofs in the absence of any shelter in the cold of Autumn and amid the pandemic.

According to NCRI: On the passing of Dr. Mohammad Maleki, the first Chancellor of Tehran University after the 1979 Revolution, on December 2, 2020, a group of political prisoners issued a statement from various prisons across the country. A group of women political prisoners in Qarchak Prison in Varamin were among the signatories of this statement, in which they wrote:

Dr. Mohammad Maleki left us for the eternal world. He spent all his life in the struggle against the dictatorships of the Shah and the clerical dictatorship, for the freedom of Iran and Iranians. He spent years in prison under torture and witnessed the executions in the 1980s. He taught us to “seek freedom from birth to death.”

The old freedom-fighter devoted all his life to freedom without expecting anything for himself. He was a staunch supporter of political prisoners and freedom-lovers in Iran. He never sought fame for himself.