Amnesty International said in a statement that Iran’s officials are cruelly toying with the life and health of Kurdish Iranian woman Soada Khadirzadeh, by denying her specialized medical care she requires outside of prison, including for heart and kidney problems.
Soada Khadirzadeh, 8 months pregnant, has been on hunger strike in the women’s ward of Urmia Prison since April 26, to protest her seven-month-long detention without charge or any information, and the denial of specialized health care, which has left her in very poor health.
As part of this protest, Soada Khadirzadeh is also refusing all medication.
On Sunday, May 1, 2022, security forces twice raided Soada Khadirzadeh’s place in the women’s ward of the Central Prison of Urmia. They inspected all the belongings of this pregnant political prisoner and her cellmates.
After a few hours, they transferred the pregnant political prisoner Soada Khadirzadeh to an unknown location but returned her at night.
Soada was on the sixth day of her hunger strike. She is in harsh conditions because of being pregnant.
Political prisoner Soada Khadirzadeh, 32, is from Piranshahr, in West Azerbaijan Province. She is married with two children and was one-month pregnant when she was arrested in October 2021 by the ministry of intelligence agents.
She is in a critical physical condition and suffers from a lumbar disc. She also has a heart problem; nonetheless, the investigator and the prison’s authorities have rejected her request for conditional release even on bail.
Following her October 14, 2021, arrest she was held in a ministry of intelligence detention center in Piranshahr and subjected to intense interrogations before being transferred to the women’s ward of Urmia prison over 3 weeks later, where she has been held since then.
In late December 2021, prison doctors issued a medical note confirming she required specialized medical care outside of prison, but prosecution and intelligence official are barring her from healthcare.
In a leaked audio message from inside the prison the Kurdish political prisoner Soada Khadirzadeh recently said: “Seven months after being detained, my physical condition and health are very dire. I am eight months pregnant. The people who are my plaintiffs have prevented my freedom, but I am innocent. I am paying the price instead of someone else, and I am held as a hostage.” In another part of her audio file, she said: “From the first days of my imprisonment at the detention center of the Intelligence Department, I have been subjected to severe psychological torture. I experienced a lot of disrespect and insults. The security forces even made unethical proposals to me. I was threatened and forced to make confessions many times even though I did not know anything about the issue. I am innocent.”
