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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian authorities are continuing to withhold the transfer of Zeynab Jalalian, the only female political prisoner in Iran serving a life sentence, to receive medical care outside prison, citing wartime restrictions on hospital transfers, according to a prominent human rights monitor reported on Tuesday.
“Jalalian’s bleeding and abdominal pain have continued at an alarming rate” in recent months, and “she has also developed severe anemia,” the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) said, citing a well-informed source.
The Kurdish prisoner had undergone surgery in September 2005 after being diagnosed with a growing noncancerous uterine mass, KHRN detailed, adding that she was forced to return to prison just 24 hours after the procedure, before completing her treatment.
“Doctors at the prison infirmary have stated that some of her uterine fibroids have likely regrown, and they have called for her immediate transfer to medical centers outside the prison so her condition can be assessed through ultrasound and MRI scans,” the monitor warned.
Since the outbreak of the Iran war in late February, authorities in Tehran have suspended the transfer of detainees to outside medical facilities. As a result, repeated requests from Jalalian and other ill prisoners have been rejected, KHRN said.
Jalalian has been in Iranian prisons since 2008 on charges of moharebeh, enmity against God - a crime under Iran’s penal code that can carry penalties including the death sentence, stemming from her alleged links to the Kurdish dissident group the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which Tehran blacklists.
After denying the charges brought against her, Jalalian’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in 2022 said that Jalalian is imprisoned on “religiously oriented charges” and has linked the reasons for her “persecution” to women’s rights. The Commission added that the Kurdish political prisoner has been diagnosed with kidney and intestinal infections, internal bleeding, difficulty walking, and an eye condition, which it attributed to torture and “inhumane living conditions.”
Following her return to prison in Yazd province in September 2025, Jalalian wrote a letter saying that while “the medical diagnosis clearly states that I should be released due to my condition and undergo surgery, the prison authorities … said I am ‘fit to remain in jail’.”.
She added, “Despite all this pain, suffering, and illness, I am happy, because I have endured all of it in the pursuit of freedom. That means I stand on the right side of history,” she added.
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