A teachers’ rights activist, who has been jailed in Iran since 2016 started a hunger strike on Sunday, March 8.
Ismail Abdi, a union activist of teachers imprisoned in Evin Prison, has been denied phone calls after being taken to the prison’s ward 6.
He has been transferred from ward 8 to ward 6 in recent days in violation of the principle of separation of the categories of crimes.
It is said that he was transferred on the pretext of making a speech and reciting a poem in memory of prisoner of conscience and Gonabadi Dervish Behnam Mahjoubi who was tortured and mistreated until his death in late February.
Esmail Abdi has been imprisoned at Evin since November 2016, when he began serving a six-year sentence for alleged national security offenses related to his peaceful advocacy of teachers rights.
The branch 15 of the revolutinary court headed by judge Salavati sentenced him to six years in prison on the charges of “spreading propaganda against the state” and “assembly and collusion agaisnt national security.”
He msust serve five years behind bars according to Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, which allows defendants to serve only the longest sentence in cases involving multiple convictions.
Abdi was qualified for parole in June 2020, but he remained in prison after judicial authorities acted a month earlier to revive a 10-year suspended sentence that he had received in 2010 for an earlier conviction related to his labor rights activism.
He was given the 10-year suspended sentence for two charges of “gathering information with the intention to disrupt national security” and “spreading propaganda against the regime.”
