Maryam Akbari Monfared’s Daughter: “My Mother Is on the Right Side of the History!”
21-August-2019
Category: Women
Breathing in Confinement – The authorities of Evin prison have recently told to the imprisoned women that their weekly meetings with their children was canceled.
Prison authorities have also stated that their family visits will be once in a month but when they were asked about the source of this order, they have said that they did not know.
Maryam Akbari Monfared is one of these mothers who is going to visit her children only once in a month. Zahra Jaafari, her daughter confirmed this news to the reporter of Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran (PRLI) and stated that so far the juvenile children could have met their mother once in a week.
“But after 10 years of imprisonment, what we share with our mother is going to be a short visit each month.” She continued.
She told that the prison authorities had also previously tried to cancel their meetings with excuses like changing the dates of meetings.
According to Zahra Jaafari, they have been targeted to strict body-searching and sometimes had to wait for more than an hour for their mother to come to the visiting hall.
These visits were 20 minutes long but after a while their duration was exceeded to 60 minutes, however on some days the authorities would force them to leave the hall sooner by telling them that the working hours were finished.
She said that they have been being watched by some agents who walk around the hall during the visits.
Maryam Akbari Monfared has also one phone call every week which is 2 to 5 minutes long.
Zahra Jaafari also pointed out her mother’s deprivation of furlough and said: “Once that my younger sister was going to the first grade and once when she had a surgery, we asked for furlough but it was both times rejected.”
According to her, Maryam Akbari Monfared’s family had gone through the whole judicial procedure and a bail of more than 10 billion IRR was confiscated for two years, nevertheless she was not sent to furlough.
The Supreme Court has rejected her appeals three times so far.
Zahra Jaafari said in the end: “My mother did not want us to be involved in political issues in such young ages but there is so much pressure on us that we have to protest.”
She stated: “I am sure that my mother is on the right side of the history. Tyranny will not last. After 10 years of our mother’s imprisonment, we grow stronger everyday just like her.”
Maryam Akbari Monfared was arrested on 31 December 2009 and her family had information of her whereabouts for 5 months. She was deprived of having a lawyer during 43 days of detention in solitary confinement. She met her constable lawyer only in the court on the first day of her trial.
In June 2010 she was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a trial which was according to Amnesty International deeply unjust.
Amnesty International says that after filing a case and demanding official inquiry into the mass-executions of political prisoners including her sister and brother in 1988, Maryam Akbari Monfared was targeted to the authorities’ revenge policy and deprived of family visits and medical care.
Three brothers and one sister of Maryam Akbari Monfared have been executed during 1980s.
Amnesty International has already demanded her immediate and unconditional release several times.