IWAC – Follow-up Report on Mahvash Sabet Shahriyari; 70 year old Bahayi teacher and UK Pen “Brave Author” award-winning poet, sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for the second time; according to a testimony newly released by Narges Muhammadi, civil activist and political prison, presently imprisoner herself, she has been under mental and physical pressure and torture and forced to spend give months in solitary confinement at Evin Prison, ward 209. Such severe conditions, as testified by Narges Muhammadi, has caused Mahvash Sabet Shahriyari a great deal of serious damages. According to Muhammadi, the reiterated 10 year imprisonment sentence directed against Mahvash Sabet lacks any legal evidence or reason, and is implemented in line with the regime’s policies of concoction and deception. According to this testimony, which was released in response to the false claims made by Iran’s minister of foreign affairs in his recent diplomatic trip abroad, in the course of past months, there have been arrestees sent to women’s ward, at Evin Prison, who have been exposed to sexual harassment and physical torture and other prisoners have directly witnessed the marks of physical torture on their bodies.
Mahvash Sabet was first arrested on 2007 along with six other members of the board of leadership of an organization called “Yaran-eh Iran” (Iran Companions); these seven detainees were then charged with “espionage for Israel,” “blasphemy” and “propaganda against the regime” and initially sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment which was reduced to ten years in the Court of Appeals; she was arrested for the second time, on July, 31, 2022, along with Fariba Kamal’Abadi and a number of other Bahayi citizens in various cities of Iran and through a sweeping wave of arrest; she was transferred to Evin Prison after her arrest and had been kept in solitary confinement until Jan. 3, 2023; according to a report published by the Global Bayahi Society in UN, she and Fariba Kamal’Abadi were “sentenced to the extremely unconscionable sentence of ten years of imprisonment for the second time” on Dec. 11, 2022. This sentence was issued by the 26th division of Tehran Revolutionary Court chaired by Judge Iman Afshari; based on an indictment previously issued by the Public Persecution Office and the 33rd division of the Revolutionary Court, she was charged with “managing a society under the title of a pervasive and deceived sect with the aim of disrupting national security;” according to her daughter, Negar Sabet, she had spent 106 days in solitary confinement while her court of appeal was not held under the pretext of the insufficiency of the evidence; she is going through this ten year long sentence in face of the fact that she has an official letter of imprisonment-incapacity in hand and suffers from constant pain due to tubercular osteomyelitis and arthrosis which was intensified by such squalid detention conditions where, due to the very high number of the arrested and imprisoned women, she had to sleep in a sitting position for quite a long while; it is worth mentioning that on 2017, this poet was awarded the “Brave Author” by the UK-based division of PEN for her poetic work which was written during her first imprisonment and led out of prison and translated to English
