Mohammad Reza Sobh-Khiz, an inmate in Tabriz Prison, has sewn his lips, protesting the judiciary’s injustice. He has been behind bars for 8 years based on forged charges of theft.
Mohammad Reza Sobh-Khiz has been on hunger strike for more than 20 days. He began vomiting blood & fainted according to reports. The ward chief, Rashedi, and prison doctor, Sadeghi, are not attending to his conditions.
Their words are, “We’ll see to him whenever he dies.”
Sobh-Khiz has been detained for the past eight years. Despite the termination of his prison term, Sobh-Khiz has been currently held because of the person who filed a lawsuit against him and due to the fact that he was charged to return stolen property.
An informed source close to Mohammad Reza said that the charges brought against him in the intelligence agency are unacceptable because all his confessions were drawn from him under torture and pressure by Tabriz Intelligence agents.
According to the source, the prisoner was sentenced to three years of prison and 104 lashes on charges of robbery and escape from a detention center.
The head of Section 12 at Tabriz Prison has not shown any reaction to the prisoner’s hunger strike and has told him that “whenever you pass away, we will attend to your case.”
Mohammad Reza was denied a prison leave throughout his eight years of prison and only when his mother died, was he allowed to attend a ceremony 40 days after her death with shackles on his legs and hands.
