Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
RFL/RE – The jailed spokesman of the Iranian Teachers’ Union’s Coordination Council has published a letter saying that, after he was transferred from Tehran’s infamous Evin prison to hospital due to illness, authorities chained him to the hospital bed for 12 days and denied him access to his lawyer and family.
The Iranian Teachers’ Union’s Coordination Council published the letter written by Jafar Ebrahimi on November 28, saying it shows the “disastrous behavior of prison officials toward a sick prisoner.”
“They made the hospital a worse place for me than the prison,” Ebrahimi said in the letter as he described being held incommunicado from his relatives and legal team.
The Evin prison has a long history of brutal behavior toward it inmates.
In March, the hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali, which claims to work inside Iran to expose the “true face of the regime,” released video footage highlighting the inhumane conditions in the country’s most-notorious prison.
Ebrahimi, along with Rasul Bodaghi, Ali Akbar Baghani, and Mohammad Habibi, all teachers’ union activists, were arrested by security agents on April 30, just ahead of demonstrations held in several cities on May Day, which coincided with Teachers’ Day in Iran.
They were also accused of coordinating the protests with French teachers’ union official Cecile Kohler and her partner, Jacques Paris.
Iran has attempted to link the French nationals to the protesting Iranian teachers. The arrests were largely seen as an attempt to discredit the rallies and increase pressure on the Iranian teachers’ union to stop the protests.
Iranian officials have accused the French couple of “entering the country to sow chaos and destabilize society.”
