Breathing in Confinement

A Comprehensive Report of the Situation of Political Prisoners in Hall 10 of Ward 4 in Rajai Shahr Prison – Part 1

17-August-2019

Category: Prisoners

Breathing in Confinement – The political prisoners in hall 10 of ward 4 of Rajai Shahr Prison of Karaj have been under a lot of pressure from prison and judicial authorities in recent years.

After violent and obligatory transferring of political prisoners in Rajai Shahr Prison to hall 10 of ward 4 on 30 July 2017, these prisoners have been under more pressure by the judicial and prison authorities.

Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran (PRLI) will try to inform the public about the situation of these prisoners in series of reports.

In the first report, a list of the pressures and deprivations on the political prisoners of hall 10 of ward 4 of Rajai Shahr Prison is being published:

1. Putting prisoners in smaller places and depriving them from being able to move.
2. Putting prisoners in darker places with closed windows and covering the windows and air holes with several layers of metal.
3. A limited time of fresh air for 2 to 3 hours even for prisoners who have served more than 10 years.
4. Strict deprivation from medical care.
5. Strict deprivation of receiving medications even at the cost of the prisoners.
6. Zero tolerance for any book or newspaper.
7. Total isolation of political prisoners from other prisoners.
8. Depriving political prisoners from any possibility of exercising, access to the library or tailor.
9. Putting political prisoners in ordinary wards so that no political prisoners’ ward would exist and forcing political prisoners not to write “political” as their charge in their official letters.
10. Destroying the prisoners’ morale with telephones which automatically say that the caller is a prisoner which also wastes the limited time of a phone call.
11. The phones are being cut automatically every 3 minutes.
12. Depriving political prisoners from having even a bed so that they would have no private place to rest for some hours during the day.
13. Installing surveillance cameras in every corner of the ward even in the bathrooms and watching the prisoners 24/7. The agents would enter the ward for a search if they see any prisoner reading a newspaper or a book or writing something.
14. Strict body searching with harassment of political prisoners and their families. Restrictions through the 20 minutes of the visits by an agents who sits on a chair close to the prisoner and his family and listens to their conversations.
15. The visiting cabins and their glasses are dirty. There is a noise on the phones and sometimes they are out of order.
16. Summoning the prisoners spontaneously of which the prisoners are informed only some seconds before without being informed of the reason and where they are being taken to.
17. Not being informed of the judicial case, having no access to the case, having no lawyer, harassment and insulting the prisoners during the trail.
18. Providing prisoners with a very limited variety of food in the prison store with law quality. The ultimate restriction on selling any vegetables and proteins and limitations on fruits.
19. Making prisoners pay for coolers and heaters and taking them out of ward by the end of the season.
20. Exercising collective punishment by the Office of Prisons. When a prisoner violates a law in one prison, all prisoners in all prisons would be deprived of their rights because of that mistake of one prisoner.