New Wave of Summons, Return of Prisoners to Prison and Executions

With less than 4 weeks left till election day, Iran is witnessing a new round of summons of civil and political activists to Iran’s ministry of intelligence, non-extension of prison leaves and mass summons of prisoners on leave. In addition, two women political prisoners, whom Tehran’s prosecutor’s office called Mossad and CIA spies, were executed last week.

While some in Iran expected that the political atmosphere would open up as election day approached, what in reality has happened is a tightening of the screws on political and civil activists. Tehran’s public prosecutor openly told prisoners who were on leave that they had to return to their cells because of the upcoming elections. In a related development, a number of journalists, and political and civil activists were summoned by the ministry of intelligence and interrogated in writing. They were specifically asked about their contacts with the election campaign offices of some of the presidential candidates, including Hashemi Rafsanjani. Among those summoned by the ministry was Fatemeh Mahdiani, the chief editor of ILNA labor news agency. Now, she has been summoned by Evin prison authorities.

Bahareh Hedayat, a student activist who had been on prison leave was denied her request for an extension of her leave and has been specifically told to return to Evin prison immediately. Ahmad Zeidabadi, Masoud Bastani, Bahman Ahmadi Amooyi, Mehdi Mahmoodian, Hossein Rownaghi Maleki, Jhila Karamzadeh Makundi, Shiva Nazar-Ahari and Behnam Ibrahimzadeh are also among political prisoners whose leave extension requests were denied and who were told to return to prison before Tuesday.

Tuesday is the day when the Guardians Council will announce its verdict on the last group of presidential applicants.

To some of the prisoners the request to return was unexpected. Ahmad Zeidabadi for example was in the middle of medical treatment for his eye but has to suspend that because of the request to return to prison before election day. Another political prisoner, Hossein Rownaghi Maleki, a blogger and human rights activist, was also undergoing medical treatment when he was told to report back to prison, as explained by his mother. She added that her son had no activity related to the current elections, yet they asked him to break his medical treatment and return.

Behnam Ibrahimzadeh is another political prisoner who was a labor children’s rights activist who was asked to return to prison while he took care of his 13-year old son who was suffering from cancer. He also has said that he has no interest in engaging in the elections and has stayed away from them. His son Nima was undergoing chemo therapy.

Yesterday, Tehran prosecutor’s office announced that Mohammad Heidari and Kurosh Ahmadi were Israeli and CIA spies and had thus been executed. The office announced that Heidari had on numerous occasions provided various security and secret information to Mossad agents outside Iran for which they had received financial compensation. Ahmadi on the other hand was said to be in contact with CIA agents and gathered information on various subjects and provided them to the US agency.

Ahmadi was a Swiss national. One of his former cellmates told Rooz that when he had asked officials why they did not allow his case to be public, officials had told him that it was because he was a foreign national and if the Swiss embassy found out about his case, they would pursue it. They told him that in that case he would be executed and dissuaded him from contacting anyone, including his family members. According to his cellmate, Ahmadi was a 40-42 year old businessman who sold missile and telecommunications gear and had come to Iran to open an office.

The names of these two individuals were passed on to the media after their executions.