According to reports from inside Iran, prison authorities tortured Iranian political prisoner Mehdi Farahi Shandiz in Karaj Central Prison. Prison guards transferred Farahi Shandiz to the prison’s medical center after he lost consciousness under torture.
The Iranian regime’s repressive forces tortured Mehdi Farahi Shandiz while he was on hunger strike.
After transferring the political prisoner to the medical center, the prison guards did not allow him to receive full treatment and immediately returned him to solitary confinement after he received minimum care.
Farahi Shandiz suffered from a heart attack in July and was transferred to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with diabetes and heart failure.
In the past eight years, Farahi Shandiz has suffered from impairment to his sight and hearing and fractured ribs under torture.
Earlier this month, Iranian Farahi Shandiz had staged a protest and chanted slogans after prison authorities ignored the demands of prisoners. During the event, prison authorities attacked him and forced him into solitary confinement.
On September 7, Iranian political prisoners in Karaj Central Prison protested to the poor living conditions inside the facility. Many of the political prisoners in the facility are kept in harsh conditions. In one of the prison’s halls, more than 200 prisoners don’t even have beds or a cell. They’re forced to stay in the open, under the sun and rain, and they sleep in hallways.
In this regard, the political prisoners of Karaj Central Prison wrote a letter to prison authorities on September 7. But the authorities refused to pay attention to the protests and warnings of the prisoners. The continued silence and inaction of prison authorities spurred Farahi Shandiz to be more vocal in his protests to the harsh and inhuman conditions of the prison.
Iranian political prisoner Mehdi Farahi Shandiz, 58, is an electrical engineering graduate and a high school math and physics teacher from Tehran.
Farahi Shandiz was sentenced to nine years in prison for three separate charges of “insulting the supreme leader,” six years of which were for charges brought against him while he was in prison.
The labor activist, was first arrested at a gathering on International Labor Day on May 1, 2009 at Laleh Park in Tehran. He was released nine months later after spending most of his detention in solitary confinement in the Intelligence Ministry’s Ward 209 at Evin Prison.
He was arrested again in June 2010 and charged with “insulting the supreme leader,” and released on bail two months later. In May 2011, Branch 28 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced him to three years in prison but extended his sentence to 12 years after accusing him of other vague charges.
Farahi Shandiz began his sentence in January 2012 and has been in prison ever since.
In 2013, Farahi Shandiz suffered from dark spots in his eyesight after being severely tortured in Evin prison. In 2017, the head of the Karaj Penitentiary severely beat Farahi Shandiz, fracturing his ribs and causing severe damage to his hearing.
Before transferring him to solitary confinement, Karaj Penitentiary’s authorities kept Farahi Shandiz in the ward of dangerous prisoners in breach of the principle of separation of crimes.
