For Supporting the “No to Executions Tuesdays” Campaign
Shiva Esmaeili, a political prisoner held in the women’s ward of Evin Prison, has been denied the right to phone contact with her children following her support for the protest campaign “No to Executions Tuesdays.” The decision was made under the direct order of Hedayatollah Farzadi, the head of Evin Prison.
According to informed sources, this disciplinary action was imposed after Esmaeili expressed her support for the anti-execution campaign from inside prison. Her sons, Seyed Mehdi Vafaee Sani and Seyed Alireza Vafaee Sani, are also imprisoned in Ward 8 of Evin Prison on political charges. Seyed Mehdi is serving a six-year sentence, while Seyed Alireza has been sentenced to five years. With this new restriction in place, Shiva Esmaeili has now been deprived of the basic human right to communicate with her children.
Shiva Esmaeili, born in 1965 and a retired agricultural engineer, was arrested in November 2020 without any transparent legal process. After over two years of legal limbo, she was sentenced in May 2023 to ten years in prison by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari. The charge against her was “assembly and collusion to act against national security.” The sentence was issued without the presence of a defense lawyer and formally communicated to her in June 2023.
