Baha’i woman Negin Ghadamian is being denied access to required dental treatment outside Evin Prison, where she is serving a five-year sentence for teaching Persian literature to Baha’i students.
Prison authorities namely the head of prison clinic Mr. Khani, did not authorize her transfer to a hospital while the prosecutor’s office had issued the required permission for her transfer.
The Baha’i woman Negin Ghadamian, a teacher for the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), was arrested on December 16, 2017, at the airport as she and her husband Pouya Oladi were about to board a plane for Europe. She was taken to prison to serve a five-year sentence that authorities had originally handed down against her in 2013. Ghadamian had not received a summons to present herself at the prison to start her sentence.
Ghadamian was first arrested in 2011 after Intelligence Ministry agents raided the homes of 39 staff and faculty members of the BIHE.
The agents confiscated her computer, scientific and religious books and some other personal items and took her to an unknown location for interrogation. She was released a few days later.
On March 12, 2013, Ghadamian and nine other Baha’i teachers were summoned to the Revolutionary Court at Evin Prison.
They were told that in exchange for their freedom, they had to sign a pledge that they would stop working with the BIHE and teaching Baha’i students.
Ghadamian and six others refused to sign the pledge and were arrested on the spot. The judge ordered them to pay 50 million tomans, as bail for release pending their trials.
In 2013, the Revolutionary Court tried and sentenced Ghadamian to five years in prison on charges of “acting against national security through membership to the Baha’i deviant sect” and working with the “illegal” BIHE.
She appealed, but in early 2015, before the court of appeals had issued its verdict, agents of the Intelligence Ministry arrived at her workplace and took her to Evin Prison to serve her sentence.
Her lawyer, however, managed to secure her release on bail pending a decision by the appeals court.
In early 2017, the Revolutionary Court of appeals upheld the lower court’s sentence of five years in prison for Ghadamian.
