PHOTO: Opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Zahra Rahnavard, under strict house arrest since February 2011


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Prominent Iranian intellectual Sadegh Zibakalam has criticized Hassan Rouhani over his record on civil rights, claiming that the President reneged on his campaign pledge to free political prisoners and opposition leaders.

Zibakalam, a political scientist at Tehran University who has often been pressured by the regime over his views, praised Rouhani for signing the July 2015 nuclear deal. However, he continued:

Hassan Rouhani gets an F for not carrying out his promise. Rouhani did not have the power to free political prisoners or end the house arrests, but he didn’t even pretend that he wanted to do something.

Rouhani said during the 2013 Presidential election that all political prisoners would be released. However, many remain behind bars, and others — including activists, journalists, writers, and students — have been detained in further crackdowns by the Revolutionary Guards.

Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both candidates in the disputed 2009 Presidential election “won” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been under strict house arrest since February 2011. Mousavi’s wife, academic and artist Zahra Rahnavard, is also still detained.

Karroubi’s son Mohammad Hossein Karroubi said on November 10 that recent mediation indicated that judiciary officials are “not opposed” to ending the house arrests; however, changes during the remainder of Rouhani’s first term were unlikely: “Based on the information we have, we believe there will be no change in my father’s situation until after the [May 2017] Presidential election.”

Ali Motahari, the conservative Deputy Speaker of Parliament, said that Rouhani has brought up the issue during “several discussions with the Supreme Leader”, but “the important point is that it is the supreme leader’s view that the house arrests should continue, and therefore other officials do not interfere in this issue”.

Asked on October 19 about the house arrests, senior Presidential advisor Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said:

If we don’t talk about something in the media, it doesn’t mean we have forgotten about the public’s demand. Sometimes it’s not productive to publicize the things the government can do or is doing. It won’t solve the problem.


Anglo-Iranian Prisoner Zaghari-Ratcliffe “At Breaking Point”

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Anglo-Iranian citizen serving a 5-year prison sentence in Tehran, is at “breaking point”, according to her husband.

Richard Ratcliffe said his wife, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, had gone on hunger strike in protest against her detention.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards in April at Tehran’s international airport, as she and her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella were returning to the UK after a family visit. She was accused of fomenting a “soft overthrow” of Iran and sentenced in September.

The Guards have arrested a series of dual nationals, but Zaghari-Ratcliffe may have been targeted because of her background as a project assistant at the BBC’s Media Action in 2008-2009. The Iranian regime has accused the BBC, including its Persian service, of promoting “regime change” and several employees of an Iranian technology news website were given lengthy prison terms in 2014 for participating in a BBC journalism training course.

Richard Ratcliffe said:

She is at breaking point. When [Iranian-Canadian professor] Homa Hoodfar was released [in September], she was really hopeful that she would be next and she got moved into a big room. She was very excited. Then she got moved back to a small room, which sent her down to a sense that nothing is going to happen, and that’s when she started feeling suicidal.

Ratcliffe said he found out about the hunger strike late last week when her family were summoned:

They received a call on Thursday to go to Evin Prison on Friday for an emergency visit for the whole family. It had never happened before.

Her mum was just really shocked by how much she had deteriorated. She was complaining about pain in her hands, arms and neck and that she was having strange palpitations, and that she was having blurred vision – clearly the impact of her diet, her long incarceration. When her mum saw her on Friday, her mum passed out.