On July 27, student and women’s rights activist Maryam Shafipour was arrested. She was only allowed a week later to contact her family to say she was in Evin Prison.
Shafipour had already been banned from continuing her education at Qazvin University for political reasons, following her involvement in the Female Students for Karroubi Presidential Campaign in 2009. In 2010, she was given a one-year suspended sentence by the Qazvin Revolutionary Court.
On September 16, when her parents arrived at Evin to see Shafipour, they were informed she had been transferred from ward 209 to an unnamed hospital. Prison authorities would not reveal the name of the facility or the conditions that led to Shafipour’s hospitalization. Two weeks later, it was finally reported that Shafipour had been transferred to the women’s ward at Evin prison.
The activist still has not been officially charged with any crime. Her trial was to begin on October 21, but was postponed.
A friend tells Safe World for Women of Shafipour’s detention:
She had been summoned to Court Number 2, labelled “Holy Martyr” in Evin Prison on Saturday, July 27th, at noon….They incarcerated her. They have inspected/attacked her home few times since her arrest and have threatened her family….
Maryam refused to cooperate with her interrogators. She did not confess to anything and she stressed that the [Presidential] elections in 1388 (2009) were rigged. They intend to extend her detention in an attempt to break her, but Maryam has not given up; on the contrary, she has a lot of strength and showed a lot of resistance, and she did not consent to the accusation and false charges.
The friend continues:
Maryam has only been allowed to have a series of weekly visits, but they are limited. She is separated from her visitors by glass, or allowed on the phone under the supervision of a prison officer, and then only allowed to talk for twenty minutes. She was at first only permitted visits by family. As a result of their follow-up, her attorney can now also meet her for short visits.
She has had a very difficult time in solitary confinement, where she was beaten. Currently, she is in the female section in notorious Evin Prison. Conditions there are better than in the solitary ward, 209, where she was imprisoned before. But Evin Prison is not a good place at all for a young woman.