December 21, 2018
Political prisoner Vahid Sayyadi-Nasiri has died after 60 days on a hunger strike protesting the denial of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions.
He was being detained at Langroud Prison in Qom and had been taken to the city’s Shahid Beheshti Hospital where he died December 12.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said Sayyadi-Nasiri’s mother, Zahra Swadeshi, told it that she received a call from prison authorities telling her that her son had just died at the hospital. She was told to appear the next day to answer unspecified questions.
Many political prisoners go on hunger strikes in Iran’s prisons, but most end them before they result in death.
Sayyadi-Nasiri was a 28-year-old real estate specialist who was critical of Iranian state policy on social media. He had been released from Rajai-Shahr Prison in Karaj March 29, after being sentenced to five years for “insulting the sacred” and “propaganda against the state.”
But he was arrested again by the Intelligence Ministry in Qom July 31. After being interrogated in the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center for a week without access to a lawyer or family contact, he was transferred to the Saheli Prison in Qom and then to Langroud Prison in early October.
On October 13, Sayyadi-Nasiri went on a hunger strike to protest inhumane prison conditions and to demand legal counsel, according to a friend who asked not to be identified. Three days later he was put on trial and within 10 minutes sentenced to 4-1/2 years for “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the Supreme Leader.”
