Tehran (AsiaNews/Agencies) The wife of student activist Ahmad Batebi has written a letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan during his visit to Tehran demanding news about her husband who is languishing in an Iranian jail. At the same time fresh stories are emerging describing the plight of other prisoners who have died or are dying in prison.
Somaie Baiienat, Batebi's wife, has called on the UN chief to set up a committee to investigate her husband's fate and that of other political prisoners so that they can be afforded a minimum of human rights.
In her letter, she writes about her concerns over her husband's health and isolation. "My repeated visits to prison and letters to Iranian judiciary officials have been gone unanswered," she says, "and Batebi is being held in solitary [confinement] in an unknown location. He has become very weak in prison and is in a bad physical situation. He has been deprived of his civil rights and is not allowed to meet or have telephone contacts with his lawyer. [. . .] He is also deprived of access to medical care."
Ahmad Batebi, 28, is a former university student in jail since the July 1999 student unrest in Tehran. He was found guilty of undermining national security for holding the bloody shirt of one of the students beaten during a raid by plainclothesmen in a Tehran University dormitory that left one dead. The picture of Batebi holding the bloody T-shirt has been seen around the world.
The police raid sparked days of student unrest in Tehran and a number of other Iranian cities, and led to the arrest of a number of students, some of whom still remain in prison.
In April 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against Batebi. But Batebi's lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, appealed the ruling issued by the court and the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later used his judicial powers to commute the death sentence into 15 years in prison.
After serving six years in prison Batebi was released for medical reasons because of his poor health, but was re-arrested last July 29.
In her letter, Somaie Baiienat mentions the fate of Akbar Mohammadi, "a student activist and political prisoner, who was in a situation similar to that of my husband, staged a hunger strike in protest to being re-arrested and eventually died in Evin prison on the 9th day of his hunger strike. I fear that the pressures being exerted on my husband would bring him the same fate."
In the meantime, a student human rights committee has reported that another prisoner, Valiollah Feiz-Mahdavi, has died. According to fellow inmates he, too, died after nine day-hunger strike. Taken to the prison's infirmary, he suffered a heart and brain disorders.
Many international organisations have accused the Iranian government of committing violence and torturing political prisoners. According to Akbar Mohammadi's attorney, "they [the government] intend to physically get rid of these students".
