Kurdish political prisoner Sakineh Parvaneh, currently serving a seven and a half year sentence in the women’s section of Mashhad Central Prison, is being denied medical care and her communication with her family is being restricted, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned.
Despite suffering from respiratory and heart problems, Parvaneh is being denied access to medical services due to opposition from the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In recent months, officials at Mashhad Prison have also imposed restrictions on Parvaneh’s telephone communications with her family, allowing her to make limited and brief phone calls only in the presence of prison guards and on condition that she speaks in Persian.
This restriction on communication also applies to other female political prisoners in Mashhad, who can only make calls in the presence of prison staff and must speak in Persian.
Additionally, Parvaneh was consistently denied the right to legal representation throughout her trial and appeals process. Attempts to contact her lawyer and seek legal advice have been hampered by the authorities’ blocking of her lawyer’s contact number.
In late August 2023, Parvaneh was sentenced to a total of seven years and six months imprisonment by Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Mashhad on charges of “propaganda against the state”, “assembly and collusion” and “insulting the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The sentence was upheld by Branch 35 of the Razavi Khorasan Province Court of Appeals several weeks later.
The court and IRGC’s intelligence service are said to have cited a video circulating on social media and in the media showing Parvaneh at the grave of Ali Mozaffari, a protester killed during the anti-government uprising of Women Life Freedom in Quchan, Razavi Khorasan Province, as evidence supporting the charges.
Parvaneh, who was released under amnesty from Mashhad Central Prison on 11 February 2023, was arrested by the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC at the Mashhad Bus Terminal on 4 April 2023 and taken to the military-security organisation’s detention centre.
The taxi driver who took Parvaneh to the terminal was also detained for several hours and severely beaten by IRGC intelligence agents.
After initial interrogations, the former political prisoner was transferred to Mashhad Central Prison on 14 April 2023.
The former political prisoner was also arrested in Tehran on 7 March 2023, nearly a month after her release under amnesty, but was released after four days.
The Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC has been refusing to return her personal documents, including her identity card.
Parvaneh had previously published a letter on 25 June 2020, describing her detention process and the harassment she had gone through during her imprisonment.
According to this letter, the security agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrested her in the early autumn of 2019 under the pretext of meeting her family in the city of Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
After her arrest, said the letter, she was first taken to the Iran-Iraq border and held in the detention centres of Marivan and Sanandaj for 10 days and then taken to the Evin Prison of Tehran.
Parvaneh added that in Evin Prison, she was interrogated and physically tortured in wards A and 209 and the ward for women prisoners.
Parvaneh’s lawyer Payam Derafshan said on 25 May 2020 that his client had been sentenced to five years in prison and three years ban from membership in political groups on charges of “membership in groups or factions opposing the state with the aim of disrupting national security”.
In April 2020, Parvaneh was transferred from Evin Prison to Qarchak Prison in Varamin for writing and chanting slogans. After spending four days in solitary confinement in this prison, she was transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Rey.
The political prisoner was returned to Evin Prison on 4 July 2020 with bruises and beating marks on her body.
Later, a court sentenced Parvaneh to two years in prison in August 2020 on charges of “disrupting the prison order”.
In November 2020, the political prisoner was transferred from Evin Prison to Quchan and Mashhad prisons.
In addition, in the past two years, she was taken several times to the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Mashhad and was subjected to physical and mental torture to make confessions on TV.
Parvaneh also went on hunger strikes several times to protest against the pressure of security agencies.
