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Iran-HRM – Political prisoner Vahid Bagheri has been on a hunger strike at the Greater Tehran Penitentiary.
Vahid Bagheri has gone on strike to protest the authorities’ refusal to grant him conditional parole.
He was taken to a prison clinic on Thursday in a wheelchair on the twelfth day of his hunger strike due to extreme weakness, and his blood pressure was 9 to 6.
The medical doctors returned Vahid to the ward of political prisoners without taking any special measures.
Having served nearly 20 months of his sentence Bagheri is eligible for parole.
However, judicial authorities have deprived him of his rights because he has refused to cooperate with them.
In a series of tweets, former political prisoner Arash Sadeghi said that “during the past 20 months, security interrogators have offered Vahid cooperation three times, and he has refused to accept the interrogators’ request.”
Rasoul Bagheri, the brother of the prisoner told the state-affiliated Telegram channel Emtedad that “While examining the documents of my brother’s case, he was acquitted of ‘conspiracy against the regime’ in the Second Branch of District 33 of Shahid Moghaddasi, but based on confessions obtained under pressure from other detainees against My brother, Judge Moghiseh sentenced him to five years in prison only based on these illegal confessions,” he said.
“The detainees were forced to confess against my brother,” he added.
“Unfortunately, my brother was denied access to a lawyer, and only the lawyers approved by the judiciary were allowed in this case. The approved lawyers however did not accept a price below 100 million Tomans for their salaries in 2019, which we could not afford,” he went on to say.
Rasoul Bagheri continued: “Judge Moghiseh did not even talk to my brother and sentenced him to 5 years in prison in 10 minutes. After we objected to the ruling and pursued it in Branch 33, the same verdict was upheld again.”
Political prisoner Vahid Bagheri, who was recently sent on leave after serving 19 months of his sentence, returned to prison after being denied parole.
“I am the breadwinner of two families, why should I still be in prison for taking part in protests?” He had previously said in a letter.
Political prisoner Vahid Bagheri, a 33-year-old father of two, was arrested by security forces during the protests in November 2019 and was later transferred to the Greater Tehran Penitentiary after interrogation.
He was eventually sentenced by Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, headed by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh, to six years in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state and society and collusion against national security.”
Political prisoner Vahid Bagheri would have to serve five years behind bars according to Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, which allows defendants to serve only the longest sentence in cases involving multiple convictions. Vahid Bagheri had previously been barred from attending his brother’s funeral.
