Deteriorating Condition of Afrin Chitsaz in Evin Prison

The Khabar Online website has reported on the "deteriorating condition" of Afrin Chitsaz, a jailed journalist in Iran. According to the report, Ms. Chitsaz was recently granted leave for surgery due to knee abrasion and returned to Evin Prison "under pressure from the security section of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps" after the surgery. Khabar Online added that the journalist's doctor had stated that she should not use stairs for 50 days after the operation, but after Afrin Chitsaz returned to prison, "despite the help of female inmates when climbing the stairs, she fainted from pain." The report indicated that Ms. Chitsaz is not receiving "strong painkillers" and, since "she is unable to go to the visiting hall, she has not had any visits in the past three weeks and has been deprived of seeing her family." Afrin Chitsaz, Ehsan Mazandarani, Eisa Saharkhiz, and Saman Safarzaei were four journalists and media activists arrested in November 2015. Davood Asadi, the brother of journalist Houshang Asadi, was also arrested along with these journalists. The IRGC labeled these individuals as "members of the enemy's infiltration network," but they and their lawyers deny this. Ehsan Mazandarani, in a letter last week, threatened to go on a hunger strike and called for the formation of a "fact-finding committee" regarding the reasons for his and other journalists' arrests in November of last year.