Call for Urgent Action to Secure the Release of Sick Political Prisoners
Political prisoner Mohammad Ali Akbari Monfared, 58, held in Fashafouyeh Prison, is paralyzed in both legs and can only move with a walker or wheelchair. He suffers from heart and brain conditions, advanced diabetes, and prostate issues. He recently underwent surgery for a blood clot and severe infection in his leg. Doctors at the hospital have stated that his leg must be amputated below the knee. In this condition, he has been chained to his hospital bed with boundless cruelty. Physicians have declared that he is unable to tolerate prison conditions and that his continued incarceration could cost him his life. According to the regime’s own laws, he should be released, but criminal intelligence agents are preventing his release and have even ordered him to be kept under tight security surveillance in the hospital.
Hoda Mehreganfar, 35, a robotics engineer in Adelabad Prison in Shiraz, has long been suffering from an Endometrioma cyst in her abdomen. Her physical condition has recently deteriorated sharply, and she is grappling with chronic pain and high fever, facing the risk of the cyst rupturing and causing internal infection. Held in legal limbo since her arrest on October 22, 2024, she urgently needs an ultrasound and treatment by a specialist. The prison doctor had previously deemed her immediate transfer to a hospital essential, but prison authorities are preventing her transfer.
Shiva Esmaeili, a political prisoner serving a 10-year sentence in Evin Prison, suffers from severe back pain. Due to obstruction by prison guards, she is denied access to a doctor. When her transfer to a hospital was finally approved after weeks of constant pain, guards returned her to the ward as she was leaving the prison, using the pretext that her bank card lacked the necessary funds. They did not even allow her to contact her family to arrange for the treatment costs.
Shiva Esmaeili was arrested in Tehran in March 2023 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of “assembly and collusion” and “propaganda against the state.” Her son, Mehdi Vafaei, 37, was sentenced to 11 years for his connections with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Mehdi was shot and wounded by prison guards during the Evin Prison fire on October 15, 2022. On September 30, 2025, Mehdi was lured under the pretext of a family visit, but before reaching the visitation hall, he was transferred to a solitary cell in the Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Qom. In solitary confinement, the authorities have denied him access to medication for his gastrointestinal diseases. Mehdi’s cousin, Mohammad Javad Vafaei, has been sentenced to death on charges of membership in the PMOI and is being held in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad.
Fatemeh Ziaee, 68, a political prisoner in Evin and a political prisoner from the 1980s who has spent a total of over 13 years in the clerical regime’s prisons and torture centers, suffers from advanced Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and is deprived of medical care.
The slow-killing of sick political prisoners, a known method of the clerical regime, constitutes a crime against humanity. The Iranian Resistance calls for urgent action by the UN Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur, and other human rights defenders to secure the immediate release of ailing political prisoners. It once again reiterates the necessity of an international fact-finding mission visiting Iranian prisons and meeting with prisoners, especially political prisoners.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
22 October 2025