October 10-14
The mother of the imprisoned volleyball fan, Ghonche Ghavami, challenged the regime Sunday by holding a sit-in in front of the gates of Evin prison to mark the 100th day her daughter has been confined.
Susan Moshtaghian visited her daughter in prison the previous day. “She is very unwell and during all these last 100 no official has listened to us at all,” Moshtaghian announced on Facebook.
“I have come here today outside the gates of Evin prison and shall not move until my daughter is released.
“I visited her on Saturday and she has lost a lot of weight. She told me, ‘My only hope is to see you once a week and if I am not able to see you I will die’.”
The mother added: “My daughter is very sick of being kept in solitary cell and her case remains unsolved and we do not know how we can help her from outside or what we should do. As no one has heard our cry for justice, I have no demand from them any more and just sit outside this gate until my daughter is freed.”
Ghavami was detained after she and other women tried to enter a stadium to watch an Iran-Italy volleyball match.
In a separate allegation, Moshtaghian said a mysterious visitor who described himself as Ghavami’s lawyer had tried to persuade her daughter to accept a guilty plea.
“A man who has introduced himself as Mister Dehlavi and a lawyer had gone to visit Ghon-cheh in prison and had asked her to accept him as her lawyer. This man has told Ghoncheh that if she pleads guilty to the charges then he can help secure her release. Ghoncheh had not accepted his offer and later contacted us to find out if we had sent this person to visit her.
“My daughter was very angry and worried. I do not know how anyone can enter a prison cell without the consent of the prisoner or her relatives and tell her to agree with him becoming her lawyer without even knowing him. I have already filed a complaint against this man and will pursue my complaint.
“Ghonche has been put under pressure to accept her charge of propaganda against the regime. She had accepted it under duress during interrogations with the hope that she could then be released on bail but now she does not accept the charge any more.”
Ghavami, a 25-year-old law graduate, began a hunger strike for her freedom last week. Moshtaghian, who was born in London and later moved to Iran where she met her surgeon husband, said she is fasting in solidarity with her daughter.
“I, too, am not going to eat until such a time that my Ghoncheh breaks her hunger strike. My God, you are a witness to how I kept my silence for 82 days so my innocent girl comes back home safely. But now that her health and life are in danger, I am not going to sit in silence. Please God, end this nightmare for me. Please give me strength to save and release my darling child.”
Three months after her arrest, Ghavami has now been charged with “propaganda against the regime”—though the regime has not explained what propaganda she is accused of distributing.
An Amnesty International spokesman said: “She is a prisoner of conscience, arrested solely for taking part in a peaceful protest against the ban on women attending Volleyball World League matches in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.”
The national chief of police in Iran, Esmail Ahmadi-Moqad-dam, told the Fars news agency: “In the current conditions, the mixing of men and women in stadiums is not in the public interest. The stance taken by religious scholars and the Supreme Leader remains unchanged, and, as the enforcer of law, we cannot allow women to enter stadiums.”
