Yesterday, Henghameh Shahidi, an Iranian journalist in prison since 30 June, was hospitalized in the clinic of Evin prison in Tehran, because her health condition (after seven days of hunger strike and medicines stike) was serious. Today the woman has been freed after the payment of a deposit of 9 million tomans (about eight thousand euros).
Reporters Withouth Borders had publicly raised the alarm about this woman's health, made even more precarious after a week without food. They raised the alarm for Fariba Pajooh, too, also very sick. "They were both locked up in solitary confinement and most of their fundamental rights, including the right to visit their families or their lawyers, were not respected."
Henghamen Shahidi has spent 121 days in Evin prison after being arrested shortly after the last elections in Iran. She had taken to the streets to demonstrate against the regime, like many other Iranians (mostly young people) have done after the elections. She spent 121 days in jail, and 50 of these were in total isolation. Shahidi has been subjected to intense torture and ill treatment during her imprisonment.
The woman, who did not ingest food for a week, will now be treated in the hospital. During this last week she has not even taken her usual medication: 28 daily pills to treat heart disease and serious mental and emotional tensions.
According to the site Norouz, Shahid had worked for the Eternad-e Melli newspaper, owned by the reformist Mehdi Karroubi, and she was also his adviser for the elections of 12 June. Her release came before somebody could understand if her arrest had occurred because she was a journalist or because of her political activities. She was writing and was editor of the blog Paineveste.
Now, after her release, new hopes opened up about the fate of Pajooh Fariba, a journalist for several reformist newspapers and editor of the blog After the Rain. Fariba, too, started a hunger strike to protest her continued detention, renewed for the third time after two months in custody. And her health conditions, already precarious because of a strong ulcer, are now increasingly delicate.
Marianna Lepore
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