Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) – Currently imprisoned at Evin, civil rights activist and Vice President of Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC) Narges Mohammadi is being championed by her mother, Ozra Bazargan. Worried that her daughter might never see her ailing father again, Bazargan pleads Mohammadi’s case for temporary release in a letter addressed to Tehran’s Prosecutor General.

The text of Bazargan’s letter, sourced from DHRC and translated into English by HRANA, is below:

Dear Mr. Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran Prosecutor General,

Why won’t you agree to Narges’s furlough? How far will you take this injustice against my daughter?

We are in the fourth autumn of our family’s separation. Narges’s father, who is 85 years old, suffers from a cardiac disease and high blood pressure. We have seen Narges four times in as many as years, as our poor health prevents us from traveling to Tehran where our beloved daughter is held. The Evin Prison officials can attest to this.

Last year, Narges’s father suffered from three horrific heart attacks. Fearing she would never again see her father alive, Narges was ready to make the trip to see her him in the ICU–with guards present–for only an hour. And officials wouldn’t even grant her that.

Narges is being kept from her two children, her husband, and her father, all while looters, embezzlers, and society’s high crooks walk free, sit comfortably at home, or– if they’re in prison– enjoy perks from the Judiciary and security forces. An intolerable discrimination underlies this.

We have witnessed the temporary release of prisoners whose lives were affected by tragic events. The last of these was Abdolfatta Soltani [who was only granted furlough in the wake of his daughter’s sudden death]. I fear that my daughter will have to wait for a tragedy, too.

My daughter did not deserve a ruthless 22-year prison sentence at the age of 44. I cannot bear to think of it, let alone of the conditions she’s in: bereft of seeing her loved ones, deprived of medical care, cut off from the cures to her many ailments. I hear that my daughter struggles with aches and pains that she is keeping from us, to spare us the worry. You and your assistants, on the other hand–you know about her pain firsthand. I am told that she suffers through days without getting care. In tears–in cries–I lift my grief to heaven and I ask God for justice.

As a mother and a member of a family of activists, I am weary of the fight against oppression. I condemn this injustice and cruelty oppressing my daughter. I request that authorities consider the length of my daughter’s long sentence, and grant her this furlough. And if you still are resolute on restricting my daughter, send guards along. Give her one hour at her father’s side, so that he might find peace at the sight of his beloved daughter.
Ozra Bazargan
Narges Mohammadi’s mother

* According to her lawyer Mohamoud Behzadirad, Narges Mohammadi has served 6 years and 4 months of her prison sentence, and has 3 years, 8 months left ahead. “She is eligible for conditional release, but the request for that release has yet to be approved,” Behzadirad said.

HRANA reported August 13th, 2018 on Mohammadi’s transfer to Imam Khomeini hospital following a deterioration in her health condition, one week after prison officials had barred her from seeing a neurologist. Earlier, on June 30th, she spent almost a week away from prison while undergoing eye surgery.

Mohammadi was issued a 16-year prison sentence in 2016, 10 years of which were for her role in LAGAM (the Step-by-Step Campaign to Abolish Death Penalty in Iran). The court equated her LAGAM affiliations with “association with the aim to threaten national security.”  Mohammadi later stated that her trial judge had displayed an openly hostile attitude towards her, and seemed adamant about backing the charges against her from the Ministry of Intelligence. She also stated that the judge likened her campaigns against the death penalty as attempts to warp divine law.

The other 6 years of Mohammadi’s sentence were on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” and “disseminating propaganda against the regime,” both in connection to her peaceful civic activities, including: interviews with the media about human rights violations, participating in peaceful assemblies before prisons, supporting the families of death row detainees, contacting fellow human rights activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, participation in peaceful assemblies in protest of acid attacks, and meeting with Catherine Ashton (at the time the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security policy) in 2014.

Branch 26 of Appeals Court upheld Mohammadi sentence in October 2016. In May 2017, her request for a retrial in the Supreme Court was denied.