SubscribeIranian Dissident Dies In Actual Hunger Strike
From the DNC’s Associated Press:
An Iranian inmate peers from behind a wall as a guard walks by at the female section of Evin jail, north of Tehran, June 2006. Iranian student activist Akbar Mohammadi has died in Evin prison following a five-day hunger strike.
Iranian Dissident Dies After Hunger Strike
By NASSER KARIMI
TEHRAN, Iran - A jailed former student leader died in prison after a nine-day hunger strike, a human rights activist said Monday. Akbar Mohammadi, who died late Sunday, was arrested after taking part in anti-government protests at Tehran University in July 1999 — the country’s biggest domestic crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
He was sentenced to death but the sentence was later reduced to 15 years in prison.
He was released on medical leave last year to seek treatment for a spinal-cord injury suffered after his arrest, said Kohyar Goodarzi, a member of the Student Committee of Human Rights Reporters of Iran.
Two months ago, toward the end of the yearlong leave, Mohammadi "was arrested without any explanation," Goodarzi said, and placed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Mohammadi went on a hunger strike to protest a lack of proper medical care, Goodarzi said.
"He suffered a heart attack as a result of his strike," Goodarzi said.
Senior prison official Sohrab Soleimani said Mohammadi had been receiving appropriate medical care.
"He was drinking water and tea and was under doctors’ supervision," the semiofficial Islamic Students News Agency quoted Soleimani as saying.
Some 25 Iranian political activists and prisoners issued a statement criticizing the government for its treatment of Mohammadi.
"Those who returned him to the prison should now be held responsible," for the consequences of his rearrest, it said.
There’s not even one wire service photo of this courageous Iranian.
And yet Cindy Sheehan’s smoothies and ice cream non-fast got all the headlines in our one party media.