Iran’s authorities have imposed additional sentences of 3 years and 8 months on political prisoners Atena Daemi and Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee (pictured) over their campaigns against the death penalty.

Daemi’s mother, Masoumeh Nemati, says the detainees have been told they must serve more time for “insulting the Supreme Leader” and “propaganda against the State”.

Daemi has been held in Tehran’s Evin Prison since November 2016, enduring a seven-year prison sentence for meeting the families of political prisoners, posting on Facebook, and condemning the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. She could have been paroled in 2020.

Ebrahimi Iraee was serving a six-year prison sentence, imposed in October 2016, when she was unexpectedly released on bail for unknown reasons in April 2019.

The women’s latest “crime” was to write open letters condemning the execution of political prisoners last September, and they sang the revolutionary anthem “Oh Martyr” to honor the slain.

Nemati said:

We were expecting Atena to go free. She was supposed to be released from prison on July 4, 2020, but now she has to stay behind bars for several more years.

This really isn’t fair. The new charges were made by the prison’s director only out of spite, based on false evidence and bogus witnesses.

Judge Iman Afshari of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court also banned Daemi and Ebrahimi from any civil rights-related activities for two years. Both women plan to appeal the additional terms.

Nemati said she has not been allowed to visit her daughter since March 2019:

We have not been allowed to visit her in prison since the [Iranian] New Year. We have complained about this to the prosecutor and the prison’s director on numerous occasions and mentioned it in the new trial. Atena even wrote a letter to the head of the State Prisons Organization but they still haven’t allowed face-to-face visitation.

Daemi is also struggling to get medical treatment, according to her mother.