Prisoner of conscience Nargess Mohammadi, vice president of the League of Human Rights Defenders in Iran, wrote to the mullahs’ Chief Justice, Sadeq Amoli Larijani, complaining about being deprived of having telephone contact with her children.
Nargess Mohammadi was arrested without warrant on May 5, 2015, by security forces and she has not had any contacts since with her 8.5-year-old twins.
In her letter, she asked the head of Judiciary what the crime of her children was, while she is the one who is sentenced to imprisonment.
Ms. Mohammadi wrote in her letter, “Upon my arrest, my 8.5-year-old children had no choice but to leave Iran and go to France but I have not been given permission in the past two months to make any calls to talk to talk to my children. My requests from within the prison have not been effective and officials say the permission for this contact has not been issued by higher officials.”
In another part of her letter, Ms. Mohammadi asserts, “I don’t know which judicial or security authority has made such a decision as a result of which the prisoner undergoes psychological pressure, but the question is if I am the one who has been sentenced to imprisonment, what is the crime of my little children?… How is it that in the Islamic Iran which claims to be powerful, stable, peaceful, secure and victorious in front of the world powers, a mother’s telephone call to her innocent children is evaluated as a national security threat and is prevented?”
Ms. Mohammadi revealed in her letter that female prisoners of the women’s block in Evin Prison are deprived of having any telephone contact with their families. There is no telephone in their cellblock while there are telephones operating with credit cards in prisons all over the country and prisoners can follow up on their problems, illnesses and alleviate their concerns about their families and children. In the women’s cellblock in Evin, however, there are 20 women including mothers who are spending their eighth year in prison and yet, there is no telephone. In such exceptional conditions, these women can only make phone calls in a building outside the cellblock, at the security office or the office of Implementation of Sentences at the presence of officers and even that can be done only three or four times in the entire year.
