Free Iranian Journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian

Mehdi Mahmoudian is a journalist and a member of the "Association for the Defence of Political Prisoners and Human Rights in Iran." Because he had made statements to foreign media about the forgery of the 2009 president election results, and because he was one of the whistle blowers exposing the horrific and deadly conditions in Kahrizak prison, he was arrested on September 16, 2009 and sentenced to five years in prison.

He is serving his term in the infamous Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj, northwest of Teheran, which is known for its torture and inhumane conditions. Any contact with him is cut off.

He had previously written a letter to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, alerting him to the violations of prisoners’ rights at the notorious Kahrizak prison, to which he never did receive an answer.

In his letter, he had cited many accounts of inhumane and criminal behavior with which the prison officials were treating young men so called “gangs and thugs” who were arrested on the streets and brought to Kahrizak. He had written of beatings, foul language, rape and physical, sexual and psychological tortures done to young men of 20-30 years of age. He had written about tens of prisoners who had lost their lives while in detention - about the ugly and inhumane manner in which the prosecutor of the time, was treating the families of the prisoners - about forcing the prisoners to undress and then beat one another with heavy cables – about shoving more than 40 people into small 30 sq. meter containers for weeks – about broken arms and legs, and he had written about many other atrocities that went on inside the walls of Kahrizak, in his earlier letter to the Leader.

Several months ago, Mahmoudian's second letter to the "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khameni, in which he described his appalling prison conditions, was made public. In it, Mahmoudian reported that "prisoners had to endure hours of exposure to the icy winter cold, while wearing only their undergarments, and were sexually abused with nightsticks." Mahmoudian spent 70 days in solitary confident and was psychologically and physically tortured. According to his relatives, his lungs have since become severely damaged and he now suffers from difficulty in breathing and epileptic seizures.