Political Prisoners’ Hall in Rajai Shahr Prison Caught Fire

HRANA News Agency – Hall 12 of Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj caught fire after the authorities “were welding to seal the windows”. A number of prisoners of this hall had trouble breathing and were hospitalized in the clinic, following the accumulation and concentration of the smoke.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), Rajai Shahr prison authorities attempted to seal the windows of hall 12, political prisoners’ ward, which led to a fire in this hall on Thursday, October 11.
An informed source in this regard told HRANA’s reporter: “The welding was with any precision when suddenly one of the prisoners shouted that the end cells were in fire, at this time all prisoners went to extinguish the fire that had engulfed the entire cell, in some seconds the hall was full of smoke and many prisoners went towards the exit door of the hall while the door was closed. If there was not the pace of political prisoners all of them would have burned in fire or suffocated. After a lot of noise, the door was opened and and the office in charge, Mansouri, immediately suspended the welding work until Saturday by seeing the deterioration of situation”.
This informed source added: “Fortunately nobody was injured seriously, just the elderly and patients had problem with shortness of breath and went to the clinic”.
This source by mentioning that this action was done by Mohammad Mardani, head of Rajai Shahr prison’s written order, while a few days before, Tehran deputy prosecutor, Mr. Hajjilu had come to visit the prison and had promised to improve the situation, also regarding the reason of this action by the prison authorities and the tension following that, at the end added: “At the moment the windows are covered by several layers and no air actually can enter the room, and by the prisoners protest based on the large number of ill and elderly prisoners they could prevent the coverage of the rest of windows. This was stopped today but probably will be done in near future”.
On the sidelines of the fire, a security prisoner who has a history of conflict and making problems for political prisoners threatened Houshang Rezaei one of the political prisoners in this ward, by knife and attacked him.
Informed sources told HRANA that, the prison authorities’ excuse to weld more windows was the violations done by this security prisoner through the windows.

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