Zeynab Jalalian: Refused medical treatment in Iranian prison

by

Zeynab Jalalian is a 31-year-old Kurdish woman who was arrested in May 2008 in Kermanshah for her alleged membership of an illegal Kurdish opposition party within Iran and charged with “enmity against God”.

Around January 2009, Zeynab was sentenced to death by the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Iran in a trial that lasted only a few minutes. She was not allowed to communicate with her lawyer during the trial. Her death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court on November 26th, 2009. Zeynab wrote a letter the day after in which she stated she had been tortured and that the judge had refused to let her say goodbye to her mother:

I asked the judge if I could say goodbye to my mother. He told me to “shut up.” The judge rejected my appeal and refused to let me see my mother

In March 2010, Zeynab was moved from the prison in Kermanshah to an unknown location that according to Amnesty International was likely to have been a detention center under the control of the Ministry of Intelligence. Jalalian was later tranferred to Section 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran. Recent reports about Zeynab claim she is currently kept imprisoned at the Kermanshah Central Prison, also known as the Diesel-Abad Prison.

In December 2011, Zeynab’s death sentence was changed to life imprisonment. Her lawyer, Dr. Mohamad Sharif told the Committee of Human Rights Reporters:

After a long period of follow-up with the judicial authorities and not being able to receive answers, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and changed it to life in prison.

Zeynab, who has suffered poor health and has lost her sight, was recently denied medical treatment by security officials, Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports. The beating and torture inflicted on her by prison authorities during her years in prison has caused severely deteriorated internal bleeding, infection and bowel problems. Her impaired vision was reportedly caused by blows to her head during interrogation; it has since worsened.