Faezeh Hashemi, the jailed daughter of the head of Iran’s Expediency Council, has published a letter criticizing the management of the country’s prisons, writing: “They cannot take away the tools of the political prisoner; if their thoughts and their pens could be controlled, Mohammadreza Pahlavi [Iran’s last monarch] would never have fallen.”
The Kaleme opposition website published Faezeh Hashemi’s letter today; it reads: “I have been in Evin Prison for three months; I see the women’s political prisoner ward rife with mismanagement, inefficiencies, bureaucracy, a lack of a programs, unprofessional decision-making, the obstinacy of middle management and the concentration of power.”
She adds that whenever this situation is somewhat remedied through protests by the prisoners, the officials then try to get back at the prisoners in some way.
Hashemi says the political prisoners are caught in the disorganized coordination between prison officials, the prosecutor’s office, the Intelligence Ministry and the security forces.
Faezeh Hashemi goes on to add that the prisoners are put under pressure through “barring in-person meetings between mothers and their children, cutting phone calls to aging or ailing parents who can’t come for visits, or children who are living in other cities and can’t make visits, and restricting visits with spouses who are also incarcerated.”
She says that such punishment is imposed on prisoners whenever news leaks out about the mismanagement of prisoners.
Hashemi is serving a six-month prison term for the charge of “propaganda activities against the regime”. She is also barred from political, cultural and media activities for five years.
She was given the sentence for holding an interview with the Roozonline website, during which she referred to the Islamic Republic government as a “bunch of thugs and hoodlums.”
