4 to 6 Years in Prison for Protesters Against 'Beatings' in Evin

The website Kaleme, close to Mir Hossein Mousavi, reported on Saturday, July 6, that seven participants in a protest against the beating of prisoners in Ward 350 of Evin Prison in April 2014 have been sentenced to a total of 'more than 30 years' in prison. Following reports of the 'beating' of political prisoners in Ward 350 of Evin Prison on Thursday, April 28, 2014, families of some of these prisoners gathered in front of the Presidential Office on Tuesday, May 2 of that year. According to Kaleme, seven 'companions' of the families of political prisoners at that time were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards and held for a while in Ward 2-A of Evin Prison. The website only named Milad Pour-Eisi, a civil activist, as one of the detainees and did not mention the names of other individuals. Previously, news had been published about the arrests of Neda Sabouri, Milad Pour-Eisi, and Sohrab Salehi during the gathering of the families of political prisoners on May 2, 2014. According to Kaleme, Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salavati, sentenced these seven individuals to a total of 'more than 30 years' in prison after holding only one session to address their case. Based on this report, Milad Pour-Eisi, a civil activist, was sentenced to six years and three months in prison on charges such as 'gathering and collusion and participating in illegal gatherings,' while the others were each sentenced to four years in prison. According to Kaleme, the 'preliminary' ruling of the court is currently under review in Branch 36 of the Tehran Court of Appeals, and the 'final verdict' for these individuals has not yet been announced. The 'beating' of prisoners in Ward 350 of Evin Prison last year received widespread attention, and many human rights organizations condemned this action. Meanwhile, Gholamhossein Esmaeili, the then-head of the Prisons Organization, denied the beating of prisoners, stating that inspectors entered the prison during a routine inspection aimed at discovering 'illegal communication devices' and faced 'provocation and insults' from the prisoners. Ali Motahari, a representative from Tehran in Parliament, also raised a question about this issue and the house arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, leaders of the protests against the results of the 2009 presidential election, to the Minister of Justice. Mr. Motahari announced in June 2014 that he was not satisfied with the answers of Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the Minister of Justice, to his question in the relevant commission, and that this question should be raised in the public session of Parliament according to the parliamentary regulations. However, more than a year later, this question has still not been raised in the public session of Parliament. In this context, the conditions of Qarchak Prison are described as 'unhygienic, inhumane, and unbearable,' and the situation of 'critical' 75 political and security prisoners in Ward 7 of Evin Prison is alarming. Tortures by the 'CIA' and the Islamic Republic's tortures, transfer of 27 prisoners from Ward 350 of Evin Prison to quarantine, changing the battlefield of 'proxy forces'; war against the people in the streets of Iran, the first paragraph; the responsibility of opponents and the possibility of radicalizing Iranian society, the death of the last Mossad representative in Tehran amid the Iran crisis.