HRANA News Agency – Ayatollah Mohammadareza Nekounam, imprisoned cleric and critic of the leadership who is suffering from multiple diseases is held in Qom prison. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison earlier and had gone on hunger strike in the solitary confinement and is in need of medical attention.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Ayatollah Mohammadareza Nekounam, imprisoned cleric and critic who is serving his sentence in Coast prison in Qom, was arrested in the wake of a critical speech by the complaints of several students and was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the Special Court for the Clergy.
An informed source about his condition said to HRANA’s reporter: “Ayatollah Nekounam is in priosn since January 1, 2015. He was in the solitary confinement for two months and in 57 days of being in solitary went on hunger strike and was transferred to the Ayatollah Gulpaigani hospital in Qom and was hospitalized in other hospitals such as Ateyeh hospital in Tehran On March 16, 2015 and April 16, 2015.”
He said about the current situation of this prisoner of conscience: “He is in the Coast prison of Qom, the clerical section. The main problem of government with him is that he says that the current authorities and even the leadership do not have the competence of giving fatwa and are also not permissible to imitate them.”
The informed source also noted: “About 35 people were summoned or arrested for interrogation by the Special Court and wanted to have their evidences for their plans by intimidation of these people but none of these people could create a false case.”
He added: “The only excuse of the Special Court is that he has confessed. That was the time that he stroke in the solitary confinement on March 3, 2015, while he was being taken to the hospital on a stretcher they showed a piece of paper to him to sign it. They told him that paper was the paper of being dispatched to the hospital. He did not realize what a piece of paper he signed. After a few days his situation slightly improved. The factors of Special Court showed the paper that he had signed as the confession.”
It is said that the students of Ayatollah Nekounam have given the documentation of the strike and texts of complaints against Makarem Shirazi to the Islamic Human Rights Commission and a four-hour meeting with a lawyer in the office of Islamic Human Rights Commission accompanied by some of his students who had been pressured to give false testimonies has also taken place.
The source also added at the end of the conversation, “The documents and medical records were referred to Mr. Hakimi in the judiciary in the Human Rights Office but no action was taken.”
Ayatollah Nekounam who has a history of being arrested during the Pahlavi regime by the SAVAK is one of critics of the rigidity in the seminary. He recently criticized those unfamiliar with new tools and forbid the Internet and Facebook and said: “I told my students to sell their carpets and go and buy laptops or tablets. You worth nothing if you cannot talk to a billion people. A Muslim is the one who is devout and civilized and not a stupid person.”
He criticized the low speed of the Internet in the country just days after the publication of remarks attributed to Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi.
When he was in a critical health condition in the prison, it was reported that he was released from the prison in Qom and was directly transferred to a hospital in Tehran.
Ayatollah Nekounam was released after two days that Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi in response to the escalation of criticism on him, said that he did not know about the arrest of Mr. Nekounam.
There are several documents about his medical condition and case provided to HRANA. Below you can see an example of these documents.