Mostafa Tajzadeh Released on Leave from Evin Prison

Mostafa Tajzadeh, the political deputy of the Ministry of Interior during Mohammad Khatami's administration and a political prisoner of the reformist movement, has been granted leave. According to the Kalemeh website, Mr. Tajzadeh's leave began on Saturday, August 14. The report adds that Mostafa Tajzadeh has spent his imprisonment in recent years 'in quarantine at Evin Prison instead of in the general ward' and 'has been fasting for the past four years in protest against serving his sentence in solitary confinement in the methadone ward of Evin Prison.' Mostafa Tajzadeh was a senior official in Mohammad Khatami's government, an advisor to him, and a member of the central council of two reformist parties, the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization and the Islamic Participation Front. Mr. Tajzadeh was arrested on June 13, 2009, one day after the tenth presidential election in Iran, and was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. The Kalemeh website added that during his imprisonment, he was sentenced to an additional year in prison due to his critical writings from inside prison and also for filing a complaint against an individual named Sardar Moshfeq, whom he identified as 'one of the designers of the 2009 election coup.'