Third Case of Assault on Female Nurses

The newspapers Shargh, Qanoon, Etemad, and Ebtekar have published the letter of Mohammad Reza Rahimi to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the front page of their Wednesday issue. The Qanoon newspaper also reported on its front page that the first vice president of the tenth government referred to his friendship with Ahmadinejad in a revealing letter and emphasized to him, "I bear the brunt of Ahmadinejad's disgrace." The Shargh newspaper, with the headline "Rahimi's Revelations Against Ahmadinejad," wrote: "The cycle of principlists declaring their innocence from Ahmadinejad and Ahmadinejad distancing himself from Rahimi's crimes is now completed with Rahimi's declaration of innocence from Ahmadinejad, as the competition among all principlists to distance themselves from one another enters a more serious phase ahead of the execution of the sentence against the first vice president of the tenth government." The Arman newspaper also published photos of Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Saeed Mortazavi, and Babak Zanjani on its front page under the title "Today's Defendants, Yesterday's Ahmadinejad Allies." This newspaper also reported that two current members of parliament, one a former director general and the other the head of an organization, have committed numerous violations for which they have received five and ten years of bans from public service, but since they are members of parliament, the law does not allow for action against them until their term ends, at which point the sentence will be executed. The Etemad newspaper also focused on "Rahimi's Revelations Against Ahmadinejad" and noted that Mohammad Reza Rahimi admitted in his letter that during the eighth parliamentary elections, "1.2 billion tomans were paid to nearly 170 candidates of the eighth parliament." However, almost all newspapers close to the principlists did not mention Mohammad Reza Rahimi's letter to Ahmadinejad on their front pages. The newspapers Resalat, Javan, Siyasat-e Rooz, Jam-e Jam, and the Hamayat newspaper affiliated with the prison organization featured photos of the meeting of Ahmad Tavakoli, Elias Naderan, and Alireza Zakani, three principlist members of parliament, on their front pages. The Resalat newspaper dedicated its front page photo and headline to the meeting of the three principlist members of the ninth parliament, "Ahmad Tavakoli, Elias Naderan, and Alireza Zakani," introducing them as "pioneers in the fight against economic corruption" and quoting them as saying, "The case of Mehdi Hashemi must be dealt with decisively." Following the resurgence of attacks by principlist critics of the government against the diplomacy of the eleventh government, the Etemad newspaper published Mohammad Javad Zarif's response to the critics in its Wednesday issue, quoting him as saying, "Criticize as much as you want, I will not respond." The Shahrvand newspaper, while publishing a report on "the third case of assault on female nurses," wrote: "An unusual incident occurred on Tuesday evening, February 6, at Rajaei Heart Hospital in Tehran, an incident that unsettled the nursing community and once again pointed the finger of blame at doctors." According to this newspaper, on the evening of Tuesday, February 6, "a 3-month-old infant was transferred from the operating room to the ICU, and the surgeon and anesthesiologist were attending to the infant's condition. The infant was in critical condition, and therefore one of the night shift nurses at the hospital was asked to inform the resident doctor about the situation. For unknown reasons, the resident refused to attend to the infant who was struggling for life on the ICU bed, and this was enough for the female nurse to inform the head of the residents about the situation until a few minutes later, a horrifying event disrupted the calm of the hospital. The resident doctor, furious that the head of his group was informed, attacked the female nurse before attending to the patient." Shahrvand noted that "the defenseless nurse faced the assault of the male doctor. The doctor's abusive language stirred the hospital hall, and with the mediation of other nurses and doctors, the situation gradually calmed down," and wrote: "The 3-month-old infant, while going through emergency minutes, died on the hospital bed." This newspaper did not provide further details about the "assault on the nurse" at Rajaei Hospital in Tehran but mentioned: "This is the third confrontation between doctors and nursing staff in the country's hospitals. Similar incidents occurred a few months ago in one of the hospitals in Yazd and a few months ago.