Free Hengameh Shahidi

Hengameh Shahidi, aged about 35, is a journalist and political activist who is currently serving a six-year sentence in Evin Prison, Tehran. She is a prisoner of conscience. A PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the UK, she had returned to Iran for the 2009 presidential election. There, she acted as an adviser on women’s issues to presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, leader of the National Trust party, of which she is a member.

After mass protests erupted following the announcement that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected, she was arrested on 30 June and held for over four months without charge. She says she was tortured and otherwise ill-treated in detention, including with threats that she would be executed. On one occasion, she says, she was subjected to a mock execution. She also says that her interrogators threatened to arrest other members of her family. Please help hengAmeh shAhidi Her trial began shortly after her release on bail in November 2009 and she was sentenced the following month. The sixyear prison term includes five years for “gathering and colluding with intent to harm state security” and one year for “propaganda against the system”. She appealed against the conviction and sentence, and remained at liberty.

However, on 25 February 2010 she was rearrested after being summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence investigations’ office “to answer a few questions”. Two days later her lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei, unaware of the reasons for her rearrest, went to Branch 54 of the Revolutionary Court. There, he was shown an appeal court ruling upholding her six-year prison sentence, issued the day before her rearrest. The appeal court did, however, overturn her conviction for “insulting the President”, for which she had been sentenced to 91 days’ imprisonment. Hengameh Shahidi suffers from a heart condition, for which she requires regular medication. ‘Were the individuals who beat me in the basements of Evin Prison brought before the [prison] disciplinary committee?’ Hengameh Shahidi to prison officials who threatened her with punishment if she continued her hunger strike in October 2009 © Private