Jailed political prisoner Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani has challenged an MP who recently visited Evin Prison, declaring that his statements about the conditions there were fraught with “lies and delusions.”
A letter by Faezeh Hashemi, which was dated January 27 and published on the Kaleme website, refers to a delegation of MPs that visited Evin Prison on January 23, following repeated complaints by political prisoners and opposition websites about prison conditions.
Faezeh Hashemi writes: “Unfortunately, the reports by Mr. Naimi and the other visiting MPs are not only mixed with lies and delusion but they are also very tactless. We saw the signs of this tactlessness during the visit as this individual treated the women prisoners with contempt; he denied the veracity of their statements and soon pressed for the delegation to leave, saying he had to get to his prayers on time.”
Safar Naimi, one of the three MPs that visited Evin, told reporters that the prisoners receive high-quality food, adding that “the name of the prison should changed to Hotel Evin.”
Faezeh Hashemi adds that the MPs had been given the responsibility to investigate the prison conditions and “were accountable for reflecting the truth as they actually saw it in the prisons and not simply as they saw fit.”
Naimi had told the Bahar Daily: “As I visited the Women’s Ward, which has Baha’i, seditious, monafeggh and mojahed prisoners (referring to members of the dissident group People’s Mojahedin Organization), their leader, Ms. Faezeh Hashemi, complained about the food and the presence of surveillance cameras in the ward, which I believe goes back to her family situation because she never ate the kind of food that we all eat.”
Faezeh Hashemi is the daughter of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and current head of the Expediency Council.
In response to MP Naimi’s statement, Faezeh Hashemi said their request for the removal of surveillance cameras had been strictly limited to those installed in the bathroom and shower areas.
She also responded to the MP’s statements about prison food, saying: “He talks about my complaints about the bad quality of food in prisons and adds his own evaluation of my family’s situation, while neither I nor my inmates spoke a word about prison food during the visit by the MPs.”
She adds that in the Women’s Ward, the inmates have long stopped eating the prison food and do their own cooking.
Hashemi says: “In this part of his statement, the MP appears not only to have fallen victim to his delusions and uttered complete lies, he also fails to hide his latent prejudice and contempt for me and my family.”
The statements by Safar Naimi were also challenged by Mohsen Mirdamadi, a political prisoner in the men’s ward of Evin Prison, who invited the MP to live in Evin Prison if he truly likens it to a “hotel.”
