Despite the deteriorating condition of prisoner of conscience Mostafa Abdi his father says he was prevented from being transferred from prison to a hospital after contracting Covid-19.
Mostafa Abdi is a member of Iran’s Gonabadi Dervish religious minority and editor of a news outlet focused on the Gonabadi dervish community.
Hassan Abdi, father to the jailed dervish activist tweeted on Friday, March 4, that his son has been in prison for 1,474 days without a single day of leave and that he should be taken to hospital immediately due to his poor physical condition.
Mr. Abdi went on to say that the responsibility for anything that happened to his son lay with the Prisons Organization and the head of the judiciary.
In another tweet last week, Hassan Abdi said that his son had suffered from Covid-19 three times in prison and that his lungs were severely affected in the recent case.
Mostafa Abdi has been sentenced to more than 26 years, and 148 lashes, following a conviction on security charges that include acting against Iran’s national security, spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime, and disrupting public order.
Abdi, who previously spent three years in jail on similar charges, must also spend two years in internal exile in one of Iran’s most remote provinces. He can neither travel outside the country nor participate in any media or political activities for two years after his prison sentence is served.
He would have to serve seven years and six months 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.
Iranian authorities arrested Abdi during anti-government street protests by Iranian Dervishes in Tehran in February 2018. The protests escalated into violent confrontations with security forces, who arrested more than 300 people.
Dervishes involved in the February 2018 protests had been demanding the release of arrested members of their community and the removal of security checkpoints around the house of their 90-year-old leader, Noor Ali Tabandeh.
Members of the Sufi Muslim religious sect long have complained of harassment by Iran’s Shiite Islamist rulers, who view them as heretics.
One of the Dervishes arrested during the protests, Mohammad Reza Salas, was hanged in June 2018, after being convicted in a widely criticized trial of killing the police officers, and another reportedly died after being taken into official custody.
