Members of the Eighth Parliament to Visit Evin Prison

The head of the Judicial Commission of the Parliament has announced that six members of this commission have been selected to visit Evin Prison, and this visit will take place on Sunday, February 8. According to the ILNA news agency, quoting Allahyar Malekshahi, the head of the Judicial Commission of the Iranian Parliament, during the session on Sunday, February 8, Mohammad Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Vakili, Mohammad Javad Fathi, Hossein Razazadeh, and Mohammad Kazemi have been chosen as members of the delegation to visit Evin Prison. The head of this delegation will be Mr. Malekshahi, and a member of the National Security Commission of the Parliament will also be introduced to join this delegation. Following reports about the deaths of several detainees from recent protests in detention centers, which were accompanied by warnings from representatives about the possibility of a repeat of 'Kahrizak 2', a group of parliamentarians requested a visit to Evin Prison. On Sunday, Ali Motahari announced that the Tehran prosecutor had agreed to the visit of parliamentarians to Evin Prison, and 'this visit should normally take place next week.' Mr. Motahari added that the issue of the 'suicide' of Sina Ghanbari is among the matters that will be examined during the visit of parliamentarians to Evin Prison. He also suggested that visits to prisons across Iran should be conducted and that investigations should be carried out regarding all individuals who 'are said to have committed suicide in the recent events in the country's prisons, to eliminate propaganda and doubts.' Regarding prison visits, Emadeddin Baghi, a political activist and human rights advocate who has been imprisoned several times over the past 20 years, stated on January 18 in an interview with the 'Jameh Now' website that 'such visits are ineffective because the main decision is with the judiciary. These visits serve as a safety valve, and a more radical interpretation is that they are misleading.' According to Mr. Baghi, these visits will only be effective if 'regular visits by independent domestic observers' are conducted in prisons. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Shahindokht Molaverdi, special assistant to Hassan Rouhani for citizen rights, announced that a request for a visit to detention centers had been submitted to the judiciary, but this request has not yet been approved. In addition to the request for visits to detention centers, more than 40 members of parliament have also sent a letter to Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Parliament, calling for the formation of an independent group to investigate the causes of death of several detainees from recent protests in prisons. While some human rights sources report the deaths of three to five detainees in detention centers, official authorities have only acknowledged the 'suicide' of two individuals during this period and claim that these two were not detained in connection with the recent protests. In this context, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of the country, announced that Sina Ghanbari, who died in Evin Prison, was an 'addict' and had committed suicide. Officials from the Central Province police have made similar claims regarding Vahid Jafari, who died in Arak prison. In recent days, news about the 'arrest of Shahab Abtahi Zadeh, a 20-year-old from Arak, and then the release of his body in front of his father's house' has circulated on social media. However, in this case, Ghasem Abdollahi, the head of the judiciary in Central Province, stated that the death of this individual 'is not related to the recent unrest and that this individual died due to drug injection.' According to Mahmoud Sadeghi, a representative from Tehran, it has been previously announced that 3,700 individuals have been arrested during recent protests, although judicial authorities have stated that many of the detainees have been released. Meanwhile, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the spokesperson for the judiciary, confirmed that 25 individuals were killed during the nationwide protests in January of this year, although independent verification of these figures is not possible.