Masouri Family’s Letter to UN Special Rapporteur: Exile Is a Form of Silent Torture
22-July-2025
Category: Prisoners
21 July 2025
News Category: Prisoners
Breathing in Confinement – The family of Saeed Masouri, a political prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment, has written a heartfelt letter full of sorrow and hope to Ms. Mai Sato, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, warning against his unlawful transfer to Zahedan Prison — a transfer they describe as a form of “silent torture.”
Their voice echoes in the heavy silence of human rights institutions, as Saeed Masouri has now spent over twenty-five years behind bars, without even a single day of furlough, held steadfastly and deprived of the most basic rights afforded to prisoners.
According to Breathing in Confinement, the news outlet of the Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran, the Masouri family — relatives of one of Iran’s longest-imprisoned political detainees — has issued a public letter to Ms. Mai Sato, calling for urgent action to prevent his unlawful exile to Zahedan Prison.
Breathing in Confinement has received a copy of the letter, which was sent from Canada on 19 July 2025. The full text reads as follows:
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In the Name of Humanity
Ms. Mai Sato,
UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran,
We — the sisters and brothers of Saeed Masouri — write to you with respect, and from the depths of a suffering that has lasted 25 years. Our brother, Saeed Masouri, has been imprisoned for over twenty-five years without a single day of leave. His name may have faded from public memory, but for us — and for our mother, who still speaks daily to her son’s photograph — Saeed remains the beating heart of this family.
He was once sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment. But no court, no judge, ever ordered his exile to Zahedan or any other prison in remote oblivion.
For all these years, our elderly parents lived only for those brief prison visits — for hands that could never touch through the glass, yet gave our father the will to go on. Our mother, who for years brought clean clothes to her son every Wednesday, now no longer remembers his name. The doctors say her memory loss stems from unbearable grief — from a longing so sharp it wears down the bones, from tears that were never shed aloud.
And now, without any legal order or explanation, they seek to transfer our brother to Zahedan — a city far from his family, a place seemingly designed to bury prisoners not in earth, but in isolation and forgetfulness.
Is this not a second form of punishment?
Is transferring someone without court order — after 25 years of imprisonment — not a form of silent torture?
Is this not a punishment inflicted upon a mother who waits for her child even in old age, and who now cannot even recall his face?
One of our sisters, still living in Iran, bears the daily burden of this pain but cannot speak out, for fear of state retaliation. If she were to protest, our brother would lose the only loved one he’s still allowed to embrace during visits.
Perhaps she should have written this letter. But we — who are slightly more shielded — write it on behalf of ourselves, of her, and of all those forced into silence.
We do not ask you for a miracle. We only ask that you hear our voice.
Our brother did not deserve such relentless suffering. And we did not deserve to be forgotten.
We respectfully urge you to do all that is within your power to oppose this unlawful and inhumane treatment.
With respect and tears,
The Masouri Family
19 July 2025 – Canada