The clerical regime’s Judiciary continues to hand down prison sentences to Iranian women activists and imprison them despite terrible prison conditions during the pandemic.
According to the main Iranian opposition force, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), the death toll in Iran due to the Coronavirus has surpassed 321,300 persons by the evening of Friday, July 2, 2021, the world’s highest per capita death toll.
Iran is experiencing the fifth peak of the pandemic with the highly contagious British and Delta variants in most parts of the country.
Prison conditions in Iran are horrible. Lack of hygiene and effective quarantine for the sick, overcrowding and no social distancing, and failure to provide disinfectants and critical medical equipment and supplies have caused widespread infection in many prisons.
The Iranian resistance has repeatedly called for the release of prisoners, especially political prisoners, albeit temporarily until the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite the prison conditions, Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court upheld the 8-year prison term for Shahrzad Nazifi despite accepting her appeal. The court had previously issued this sentence in absentia for this Baha’i citizen, a motor cross champion and coach.
In yet another case, the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Islamabad-e Gharb objected to the dismissal of Anisa Jafari-Mehr, a cultural activist. The Revision Court of Kermanshah is now processing her case.
The intelligence forces arrested her on November 23, 2020. She was released on a 350M Toman bail on December 9. The Revolutionary Court of Islamabad-e Gharb exonerated her in June from the charge of propaganda against the state on April 15, 2021.
Anisa Jafari-Mehr, 27, is a graduate student of linguistics at the University of Kurdistan.
