Iranian political prisoner Ghassem Sholeh Saadi is in critically poor health and is being denied medical care, opposition media report.
The Kaleme website reports that Evin Prison physicians have declared that Sholeh Saadi is not fit to serve out his sentence, but prison authorities refuse to attend to his case.
Kaleme adds: "This prisoner has not been allowed to be transferred to a hospital outside the prison and he has also been denied medical leave and he is often denied family visits."
Sholeh Saadi,a professor at Tehran University and a former lawmaker, was arrested last April at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran while returning from Shiraz.
In 2002, he was arrested and held for 36 day for writing a critical open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. In part, he wrote: "You [Ayatollah Khamenei] have upset the reform Parliament in the worst way possible. In addition to setting up obstacles to its legislative activities and denying its member immunity from arrests and persecution, you have threatened the president [Mohammad Khatami] that you would stand against him and all Members of Parliament. Aren’t the President and MPs directly elected by the votes of the majority of the people? Isn’t standing against them akin to standing against the great people of Iran? Will you stand against the great people of Iran? …..Is this the meaning of religious rule of the people? Is this the meaning of the slogan, independence, freedom, Islamic Republic?"
