Iran: female prisoner on hunger strike

Jailed child rights activist Atena Faraghdani went on hunger strike for three days protesting “bogus allegations” raised against her by security agents.
The mother of this prisoner said her daughter was charged on Saturday, September 12, of having “illegitimate relations” with her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi for shaking his hand in prison. Even the lawyer has been arrested and transferred to Rajaie Shahr Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. This arrest raised numerous protests from various lawyers.
Despite her dire physical conditions Faraghdani launched this hunger strike and protested the bogus allegations.

 She was already sentenced by a so-called Islamic court to 12 years and 9 months behind bars on charges of “propaganda against the state, measures against national security, insulting members of parliament through drawings, and insulting Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).” Faraghdani was arrested on August 23, 2014 by the IRGC and spent nearly two months in Ward 2A of Evin Prison that is under IRGC supervision. Twenty days of her detention was in solitary confinement. She also went on hunger strike for twenty days protesting lack of access to a lawyer, being deprived of phone calls with her family and her continued illegal detention. However, she suffered a heart attack on the 18th day and was hospitalized in Firuzgar Hospital, south of Tehran. A few days later she was returned to Evin Prison.

(September 15, 2015)