Political prisoner Soheil Arabi has been denied phone calls and visits in a quarantine ward of Rajaei Shahr Prison in Karaj.
An informed source said that “Soheil Arabi, who was transferred to the quarantine ward of Rajai Shahr Prison on September 21, is still being held in this ward and is deprived of phone calls and family visits”.
“His mother is concerned about his son as he had no contact after being transferred to Rajai Shahr Prison,” the source said.
On September 18, Soheil Arabi was taken to an unknown location from the Greater Tehran Penitentiary (GTP) where he was being held since January 21.
The move came after the 35-year-old blogger exposed the “deplorable condition” of the GTP in an audio file leaked out of the notorious jail.
Arabi’s fellow inmates were told that he was taken to the prison’s medical center.
After three days of no news about his son, Arabi’s mother Farangis Mazloum, found out that Soheil Arabi has been transferred to Rajaei Shahr prison and placed in solitary confinement.
Soheil Arabi has repeatedly exposed the news of the deplorable situation of the prisoners and widespread corruption among the prison authorities.
The transfer appears to have been taken place to silence him.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) has condemned the transfer of political prisoner Soheil Arabi to solitary confinement in Rajaei Shahr prison.
Soheil Arabi was arrested in November 2013 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in his home in Tehran for his Facebook posts.
He was initially sentenced to death on August 30, 2014 but his sentence was commuted in 2015 to seven and a half years in jail, and two years of mandatory study of Islamic theology, as well as a ban from leaving Iran for two years.
Arabi’s mother, who had been pursuing her son’s case for years, was also arrested last year and sentenced to six years in prison last July for “propaganda against the regime.”
