Political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared has been abruptly transferred from the women’s ward of Evin Prison to the Prison of Semnan.
Reports from the women’s ward of Evin Prison indicate that her cellmates intervened to prevent her relocation. But prison guards violently broke into the ward and forcibly took her out.
Maryam Akbari Monfared has been in prison since December 2009 without a single day of furlough. She has been deprived of access to medical treatment.
She has already served nearly 11 years in prison and should have been eligible for release since two years ago.
She was summoned to the Evin Courthouse on June 10, 2020, to be arraigned with her charges in a new case opened for her. But she did not attend the hearing because she had not received a written summon, and because of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Her court hearing convened on August 31, 2020. She is charged with “disruption of order in prison” through chanting anti-government slogans on the night of the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution on February 11. She says she had only protested leaving a sick prisoner unattended for which she was deprived of her visitation on February 16, 2020.
Akbari Monfared was originally tried on charges of supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and convicted of “waging war against God” in May 2010.
She never accepted the charges.
Akbari Monfared was convicted because she had made phone calls to her relatives, who are members of the PMOI, and had visited them once in Iraq.
She was sentenced by the notoriousl Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran to 15 years in prison. In August 2010, her sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court.
Maryam Akbari Monfared has three daughters. Maryam Akbari’s sister and brother were executed during the massacre of political prisoners in summer 1988. Another two of her brothers were executed during the mass executions in the early 1980s.
