The latest news from food strike Akbar Mohammadi in Evin prison

Students’ Committee of Human Rights Reporters

Akbar Mohammadi imprisoned student who was refused his medical furlough from prison, began a hunger strike on July 23rd. According to reports, as of Tuesday, the fourth day of his hunger, his physical condition has begun deteriorating.

Due to the side effects of torture and prison interrogation, Mohammadi has been diagnosed, among other physical ailments, with ruptured discs. Last year he had been permitted to leave on a medical furlough from prison in order seek treatment and though the judiciary’s doctors had recommended for him to receive extended leave from prison, last month his family house in Amol (northern Iran) where he had been staying was stormed by the regime’s intelligence and disciplinary guards where he was taken into custody and returned to Evin prison in Tehran.

While in prison Akbar Mohammadi published a book outside Iran that was his memoirs of prison.

According to the latest news from Evin Prison, the warden has threatened Mohammadi with a transfer to Rejaiishahr prison’s solitary confinement should he attempt a hunger strike. Also on Monday, July 24th the director of Evin prison had announced that he will meet with Mohammadi, to convey to him that he, as head of the prison was not authorized to release him and that such order would have to come from higher on the judicial chain of command. Mohammadi however refused to meet with the warden and said that any such meeting would not glean any results. All this occurred as the regime blocked Mohammadi’s visitation rights as well.

Akbar Mohammadi was among the first rank of the accused Tehran university campus students involved in the July 1999 uprising; he was first sentenced to death and then his sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison. He is now in section 350 of Evin prison, known as the work camp of the penitentiary.